The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday approved its annual resolution calling for an end to the United States embargo on Cuba, with 130 votes in favor, 17 against and 25 abstentions. It was the weakest result for Havana since the proposal was first introduced in 1992. Romania was among the countries reported as abstaining.
At 11:19 a.m., the voting board at UN headquarters in New York showed the decline. In 2025 the resolution had received 165 votes in favor and seven against; by 2026 it had lost a further 35 supporters, while votes against more than doubled. In 2024 Cuba had drawn 187 votes in favor and two against. Over that span, support fell by 57 votes and objections rose more than eightfold.
The United States, Israel, Argentina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Paraguay and Ukraine were listed as having already voted against the text in 2025. Austria, Barbados, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Lithuania, Morocco, Slovenia and Trinidad and Tobago were reported as moving from abstention or support to opposition. The abstention list also included Germany, which had backed the resolution since 2002, along with Romania and other states such as Bulgaria, Moldova, Poland and Greece.
The drop had been signaled in July, when a procedural vote to approve an extraordinary debate on the embargo secured 136 votes in favor. Trinidad and Tobago and Germany were already changing long-standing voting patterns.
The day before the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla approached the podium while US Ambassador Michael Waltz was speaking. Assembly President Khalilur Rahman briefly suspended the session and said, "Please return to your seat."
In his address, Waltz showed delegates photographs of Fidel Castro’s $40,000 Rolex watches, Hermès ties, Montblanc pens belonging to Díaz-Canel, and properties owned by the Castro family. He also cited a Miami Herald investigation that found the military-run conglomerate GAESA had accrued $18 billion in profits and $14 billion in secret cash accounts.
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry marked the outcome on social media with a graphic declaring "Victory for Cuba" and the slogan "Cuba is not a threat, the blockade is." The ministry said that the vast majority of the international community had again condemned what it called the illegal and criminal US blockade.
The resolution is not legally binding, and only the United States Congress can lift the embargo. Havana’s strongest comparison remains 2016, during the thaw with the Obama administration, when the text received 191 votes in favor and none against.