The Cuban Prisons Documentation Center (CDPC) presented a complaint to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that exposes a systematic practice of the regime: using family contact as a mechanism of pressure and punishment against women deprived of their liberty in Cuba.
The complaint was filed on Tuesday in Panama, during a regional hearing on the situation of incarcerated women convened as part of the 197th Session Period of the CIDH, with the participation of organizations from Guatemala, Colombia, Mexico, and Cuba.
Camila Rodríguez, director of the CDPC, explained to the commissioners the central mechanism of the complaint: in Cuban prisons, the State does not guarantee food, medicine, or basic hygiene products, so it is the families—almost always mothers, sisters, and daughters—who bring them during visits.
"The visit is not just an emotional space: it is the channel through which, in practice, the State's duty as a guarantor is fulfilled, which it fails to do," Rodríguez stated.
He emphasized that the problem is that this same channel is subject to the discretion of the prison authorities. "The same State that delegates the support of women deprived of liberty to their families controls access to that channel in a discretionary manner. What arises from their omission ends up becoming a tool of control," he pointed out.
The CDPC documented specific cases. In 2025, a mother was prevented from visiting her politically imprisoned daughter at least nine times, under pretexts such as arriving dressed in white or a supposed chikungunya outbreak. In January of this year, the confiscation of medications brought during a visit resulted in the complete cancellation of family contact. “The person in prison and their family are punished for trying to provide what the State does not offer,” Rodríguez stated.
Other cases include threats to withdraw custody of children from female inmates and transfers to distant prisons. A mother of five minor children, referring to the political prisoner Lizandra Góngora, went over six months without seeing them after being transferred to the Isle of Youth.
Rodríguez also mentioned the case of a woman taken to a punishment cell in April of this year following an altercation with an official, found lifeless hours later. Her family rejects the official account, and the body was transferred to the Forensic Medicine department without family presence. In September, another mother reported that her daughter self-harmed after a period during which she was unable to call her loved ones.
Between 2022 and 2026, the CDPC recorded 306 human rights violation events related to women deprived of liberty in Cuba, including serious impacts on reproductive health and inadequate medical care.
The organization asked the IACHR not to treat restrictions on family contact as mere disciplinary measures. "When a woman depends on her family for food and medical care, restricting that contact affects her personal integrity and extends the punishment to people who have not been convicted, something that Article 5.3 of the American Convention prohibits," Rodríguez argued.
Additionally, it joined the request to the IACHR to promote measures to prevent the suspension of family visits and calls as a disciplinary sanction, as well as to advocate for alternatives to imprisonment for vulnerable women.
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