Cuba: Independent experts condemn new US sanctions as humanitarian crisis deepens

Published 6 August 2026 · health

The Human Rights Council–appointed group of experts warned that without swift action from the international community and civil society, Cuba risks becoming a “silent Gaza”

The Human Rights Council–appointed group of experts warned that without swift action from the international community and civil society, Cuba risks becoming a “silent Gaza” – a comparison recently drawn by four members of the US Congress during a visit to the island last month. Washington has widened unilateral sanctions on key sectors of the Cuban economy since June 2026. The US took measures to block oil supplies from entering the country in January, after cutting off shipments from Venezuela, which had previously been a key exporter to Cuba. Tweet URL ‘Full blown crisis’ The latest measures, announced 23 July, target energy companies and have further choked off fuel imports – even for humanitarian purposes – just as Cuba grapples with severe fuel shortages and a third major nationwide blackout.

Energy, transport, irrigation and basic services are breaking down at once, the experts said, hitting women, children, older people and rural farmers hardest. “The humanitarian consequences are already unfolding into a full-blown crisis, threatening the rights to health, to life, to food and to development,” they said, pointing to reports of uncollected waste piling up in parts of Havana and raising the risk of disease outbreaks. UN agencies in Cuba have flagged growing food insecurity and shortages of medicines and basic supplies, as repeated grid failures and blackouts disrupt health care and leave hospitals short of medicine and cancer treatment capacity. “Food must never be used as an instrument of political pressure,” the independent experts said – who do not work for the UN and receive no salary for their work.

“Measures that knowingly deprive a population of the means to survive strike at the most basic guarantees of the rights to life and diminish the core of human dignity.” Political, not security motives The experts outlined that on 20 July, the US State Department released a report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st-Century Communism, describing the one-party State as a multifaceted threat to US national security and regional stability. The experts said the report offers no concrete evidence that Cuba supports terrorism or subversion, and voiced concern that political and ideological motives – not security ones – appear to be driving the continued pressure. The measures, they said, breach Article 2 of the UN Charter and form part of a broader regime-change strategy that also encompasses the decades-old US embargo on Cuba.