For the 29 years in a row, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution demanding the end of the 60-year embargo on Cuba imposed by the US.
What happened?
The US and Israel were the only countries opposed to the June 30 resolution: 184 voted in support of it.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla did not mince his words lambasting the US for human rights violations:
“This is made visible by the lengthy lines which every day overwhelm the Cuban people in the midst of a pandemic to access basic goods, by the shop shelves that are empty and the unbridled increase in food prices. … The blockade is a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all of the Cuban people. Pursuant to Article II, subparagraph (c), of the Geneva Convention of 1948, the blockade constitutes an act of genocide.”
This says a lot about the regard (or lack of it) the US has for the UN. In fact, ‘contempt’ may be a more appropriate word. One would have hoped that Biden’s America would have been different, especially considering the Democrat majority in both houses. Moreover, as one of the five permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council, the US’s contempt for the opinions of the rest of the member States is all the more a betrayal of the organisation it was instrumental in creating.
