Claim against US blockade against Cuba returns to UN

United Nations, Jun 23 (Prensa Latina) The international demand to put an end to the United States blockade against Cuba on Wednesday once again tops the agenda of the UN General Assembly, which has already expressed its rejection to that mechanism on 28 previous occasions.

June 23, 2021
07:15

The draft resolution calling for an end to that siege imposed by Washington more than six decades ago will be submitted at the multilateral forum this Wednesday, and then it will be voted on.

Since 1992, most of the United Nations member States have expressed themselves in favor of lifting that policy, while nations such as the United States and Israel have remained isolated with their vote against ending the unilateral mechanism.

In 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Cuba could not submit the draft resolution ‘Necessity to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba’ and postponed it for this year.

Every year, Havana publishes a report entitled ‘Cuba vs Blockade,’ which presents with figures and by sectors the tangible and accounting effect of the sanctions the Caribbean nation has suffered for 62 years due to Washington’s policy.

That report, rigorously drawn up, shows that the US siege is the main reason therefore Cuba could not have materialized its sustainable development plans and the complete achievement of the 2030 Agenda, Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations Pedro Luis Pedroso told Prensa Latina.

As in 2020, the debate and voting session of the draft resolution calling for the end of the blockade was postponed, now an annex or addendum has been submitted to that report, the ambassador said.

The text includes the main effects caused by that policy from April to December 2020, a period in which the US Government tightened the blockade in an opportunistic and unprecedented way in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Pedroso stressed.

Under the Donald Trump administration, the White House adopted more than 240 unilateral coercive measures and sanctions against Cuba, which currently remain intact, he recalled.

Between April and December 2020, the blockade caused about 3.5 billion dollars in losses for Cuba. That added to the damages of the previous period, amounts to a total of 9.1 billion dollars, from April 2019 to December 2020.

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