Eleven distinguished former heads of government across the Caribbean region have issued a collective, high-profile call for the global community to rally behind a United Nations General Assembly resolution scheduled for October 28, 2026, that demands an immediate end to the decades-long U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The formal appeal, delivered as an open letter dated October 24 and shared publicly via a press release from the Cuban Embassy in Dominica, frames the upcoming UN vote as a critical moment to reassert shared international commitments to humanitarian principles and international law.
The cohort of signatories brings decades of regional diplomatic and leadership experience: former Barbados Prime Minister Freundel Stuart; former Belizean Prime Ministers Said Musa and Dean Barrow; former Grenadian Prime Ministers Keith Mitchell and Tillman Thomas; former Jamaican Prime Ministers Bruce Golding and P.J. Patterson; former Saint Lucia Prime Minister Kenny Anthony; former St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves; former Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley; and former Guyanese President Donald Ramotar. Their joint statement unequivocally denounces the U.S. embargo as a blatant violation of both the UN Charter and core humanitarian norms, dismissing the unilateral coercive measures as nothing less than the “law of the jungle” that has no legitimate standing under any recognized framework of global justice. The signatories explicitly emphasize that Cuba poses no threat whatsoever to any nation or individual worldwide.
Their intervention comes amid a sharp escalation of U.S. sanctions targeting Cuba’s energy access that has triggered severe, widespread humanitarian distress across the island. On January 29, 2026, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency that imposed punitive secondary tariffs on any country or entity that directly or indirectly supplies petroleum products to Cuba. The policy, designed to deter global fuel suppliers rather than physically intercept shipments, prompted Mexico to formally suspend all fuel exports to the island to avoid U.S. penalties. Subsequent U.S. measures followed in rapid succession: a May 5 sanctions program targeting foreign firms and financial institutions conducting business with Cuban sanctioned entities, the June blacklisting of Cuba’s state-owned oil company, and an October announcement by Miami federal authorities that they had seized 90 fuel shipments worth an estimated $2.8 million bound for a sanctioned Cuban wholesaler.
UN human rights experts have condemned the January executive order as an extreme form of extraterritorial unilateral economic coercion, warning that the resulting fuel shortages have forced rolling blackouts of up to 20 hours per day across Cuba, crippling household access to power, disrupting critical hospital operations, and endangering food and pharmaceutical cold storage systems. Reports of avoidable suffering have circulated widely in 2026: an open letter from an anonymous Cuban woman in February documented premature deaths among elderly residents due to shortages of life-saving medications for chronic conditions including heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes, as well as life-threatening risks for newborns when hospital incubators lost power amid fuel shortfalls. Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM David Comissiong described these documented harms as a form of “terrorism through hunger” inflicted by U.S. economic pressure, and energy supply disruptions persisted as late as September 2026 despite limited international humanitarian aid shipments.
U.S. officials have pushed back firmly against these characterizations. In an October 22, 2026 op-ed titled “The Truth Behind Havana’s Darkness,” Karin Sullivan, Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy to Barbados, the Eastern Caribbean, and the OECS, argued that Cuba’s ongoing economic and social hardships stem from domestic government mismanagement, corruption, diversion of state resources, exploitation of medical workers deployed overseas, and systemic suppression of political freedoms, rather than U.S. sanctions. Sullivan emphasized that U.S. policy explicitly permits food and medical exports to Cuba, noted ongoing U.S. humanitarian assistance programs for the Cuban people, and urged Eastern Caribbean governments to vote against the upcoming October 28 UN resolution and push the Cuban government to implement meaningful structural reforms.
The former Caribbean leaders’ open letter directly pushes back against U.S. diplomatic efforts to sway member state votes, explicitly calling on all nations to resist what they describe as ongoing U.S. blandishments and pressure campaigns designed to defeat the resolution. The upcoming vote marks a critical test of Cuba’s longstanding international diplomatic support. In 2024, the UN General Assembly resolution opposing the U.S. embargo passed with 187 nations in favor, only two countries voting against, but the 2025 vote saw a sharp erosion of support: the measure passed with 165 affirmative votes, 7 nations voting in opposition (including first-time no-voters Argentina, Hungary, Paraguay, North Macedonia, and Ukraine, which reversed its longstanding previous support), and 12 countries abstaining. Cuba’s foreign ministry accused Washington in 2025 of waging an unprecedented campaign of pressure, intimidation, and toxic diplomatic interference to sway member states away from supporting the resolution.
While all 14 CARICOM member states maintained their unbroken record of voting in favor of the resolution in 2025, the 22-vote drop in affirmative support between 2024 and 2025 has raised widespread concerns among embargo opponents that sustained U.S. diplomatic pressure could further reduce backing for the 2026 measure. Though UN General Assembly resolutions are non-binding and cannot unilaterally repeal the statutory provisions of the U.S. embargo, which requires legislative action by the U.S. Congress to lift, the annual vote remains a high-profile global platform for nations to publicly register their stance on the decades-long dispute. For the 11 former Caribbean heads of government, the 2026 vote represents a pivotal opportunity to reaffirm global solidarity with the Cuban people and reassert the primacy of international law over unilateral coercive power, closing their appeal with a call to action: “Let us all stand with Cuba and humanity on this matter.”