Document presented
to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at the meeting of its
Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, Fifty-fifth
session, held in Geneva, July 28 – August 15, 2003.
Published by the Monthly Review, January 2004.
The U.S. embargo against Cuba has been condemned by a growing number,
by now an overwhelming majority, of member states of the United Nations
General Assembly. However, it remains in force by the U.S. government's
isolated but stubborn will, in spite of repeated UN injunctions, notably
its resolution 56/9 of November 27, 2001.The purpose of this exposé
is to denounce this embargo in the strongest terms as a violation of law,
and for its total lack of legitimacy. These measures of arbitrary constraint
are tantamount to an undeclared act of war by the United States against
Cuba; their devastating economic and social effects deny the Cuban people
the ability to exercise their basic human rights, and are unbearable for
them. They directly subject the people to extreme suffering and infringe
upon the physical and moral integrity of the whole population, inflicting
the greatest harm on children, the elderly, and women. In this respect,
the embargo can be seen as a crime against humanity. Imposed since 1962,the
U.S. embargo was reinforced in October 1992 by the "Cuban Democracy
Act" (or Torricelli Law),which aimed to restrain the development
of the Cuban economy's new driving forces by restricting the inflow of
funds and goods to Cuba by:
(1) strictly limiting the transfers of foreign currencies by Cuban families
in exile,
(2) banning from U.S. harbors for six months all ships that had anchored
in a Cuban port, and
(3) imposing sanctions against firms doing commerce with the island even
if under the jurisdiction of a third state.
The embargo was further systematized by the "Cuban Liberty and Democracy
Solidarity Act" (Helms-Burton Law) of March 1996, which aimed to
harden the "international" sanctions against Cuba. Its Title
I generalizes the ban on importing Cuban goods, demanding, for example,
that exporters give proof that no Cuban sugar has been integrated in their
products, as was already the case with nickel. It conditions the authorization
of currency transfers to the creation on the island of a private sector
including employment of salaried staff. Still more ambitious, Title II
defines the form of a transition to a "post-Castro" power, and
specifies the nature of its relationship with the United States. Title
III grants U.S. tribunals the right to judge claims for damages made by
a person of U.S. nationality injured by the loss of property in Cuba due
to nationalization, and to demand compensation from the users or beneficiaries
of this property. At the request of the old owners, nationals of a third
state, who have done business with these users or beneficiaries, can be
sued in the United States. The sanctions incurred are set out in Title
IV, which permits, among other things, the State Department to refuse
U.S. entrance visas to the current owners.
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The normative content of this embargo -specially the extraterritoriality
of its rules, which seek to impose on the international community unilateral
sanctions by the United States, or the denial of the right of nationalization
-is a violation of the spirit and letter of the United Nations Charter
and the Organization of American States, as well as of the very fundamentals
of international law. This excessive extension of the territorial jurisdiction
of the United States is contrary to the principle of national sovereignty
and to that of non-intervention in the internal choices of foreign states
-as recognized in the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice.
The embargo opposes the Cuban people's rights to self-determination and
to development. It also forcefully contradicts the freedom of trade, navigation,
and movement of capital -all of which the United States paradoxically
advocates everywhere else in the world. This embargo is moreover illegitimate
and immoral because it attacks the social benefits realized by Cuba in
recent years and imperils their success -recognized by many independent
international observers (in particular those of the WHO, UNESCO, UNICEF,
and many other non-governmental organizations). These successes include
the public systems of education, research, health, and culture. Furthermore,
the threat that this coercive operation poses for U.S. nationals and foreigners
extends the practical impact of the embargo to areas completely or partially
excluded from the statutes, such as food, medicines or medical equipment,
and the exchange of scientific information.
Economic Harms of the Embargo
According to Cuba's Report to the United Nations Secretary-General on
the U.N.'s General Assembly Resolution 56/9 (2002), the direct economic
damages to Cuba's economy, caused by the U.S. embargo since its institution,
would exceed seventy billion dollars. The damages include:
(1) the loss of earnings due to the obstacles to the development of services
and export (tourism, air transport, sugar, nickel);
(2) losses registered as a result of the geographic reorientation of the
commercial flows (additional costs of freight, stocking, marketing, and
purchasing of the commodities);
(3) the limits imposed on the growth of the national production of goods
and services (due to limited access to technologies, lack of access to
spare parts and hence early retirement of equipment, forced restructuring
of firms, and serious difficulties sustained by the sectors of sugar,
electricity, transportation, and agriculture);
(4) monetary and financial restrictions (the impossibility of renegotiating
the external debt, interdiction of access to the U.S. dollar, unfavourable
impact of the variation of exchange rates on trade, risk-country rating,
and additional costs of financing due to U.S. opposition to the integration
of Cuba into the international financial institutions);
(5) the pernicious effects of the incentive to emigration, including illegal
emigration (the loss of human resources and talents generated by the Cuban
educational system); and
(6) social damages affecting the population (concerning food, health,
education, culture, and sports).
In addition to negatively affecting all these sectors, the embargo directly
impedes -aside from export -the driving forces of the Cuban economic recovery,
the strongest of which are tourism, foreign direct investments (FDI),
and currency transfers.
Many European subsidiaries of U.S. firms have recently broken off negotiations
for the management of hotels because their lawyers anticipated that the
contracts would be sanctioned under the provisions of the Helms-Burton
law. In addition, the purchase by U.S. groups of European cruise lines,
which moored their vessels in Cuba, was cancelled in 2002-2003.The obstacles
imposed by the United States, in violation of the Chicago Convention on
International Civil Aviation, on the sale or the rental of planes, to
the supply of kerosene and to access to new technologies (such as e-reservations
and radio location), will lead to a loss of $150 million in 2003.
The impact on FDI is also very unfavourable. The institutes that promote
FDI in Cuba received proposals for more than five hundred projects in
cooperation with U.S. companies, but none of them could be realized -not
even in the pharmaceutical and biotechnological industry, where Cuba has
a very attractive potential.
Transfers of currency from the United States are limited to less than
US$100 a month per family, and some European banks have had to reduce
their commitments under pressure from the United States, that let them
know indemnities would be required if loans were maintained. In Cuba,
the embargo penalizes the activities of a range of sectors throughout
the economy: banking and finance, insurance, petroleum, chemical products,
construction, infrastructures and transportation, shipyards, agriculture
and fishing, electronics and computing, as well as the export sectors
where U.S. owned enterprises prevailed before 1959, such as sugar, whose
recovery is impeded by its exclusion from the international commodities
exchange in New York.
Social Harms of the Embargo
The U.S. government's announcements intimating that it would favour the
relaxation of the restrictions concerning foodstuffs and medicines are
not credible and cannot obscure the fact that Cuba has been the victim
of a de facto embargo in these areas. The reduction of the availability
of these types of goods exacerbates the privation of the population and
constantly threatens its dietary security, its nutritional stability,
and its health. A humanitarian tragedy -which seems to be the implicit
objective of the embargo -has been avoided only thanks to the will of
the Cuban state to maintain at all costs the pillars of its social model,
which guarantees to everyone, among other things, staple foods at modest
prices and the free provision of food in nurseries, schools, hospitals,
and homes for the elderly. That is the reaffirmation of the priority given
by the authorities to human development, which explains the established
excellence of the statistical indicators of Cuba concerning health, education,
research, and culture, and this despite the extremely limited budgets
and the numerous problems resulting from the disappearance of the Soviet
bloc.
However, the continuation of the social progress in Cuba is impaired by
the effective extension of the embargo. According to the American Association
of World Health, the pressures exerted by the U.S. State Department and
Department of Commerce on the suppliers of Cuba have affected the availability
of a wide range of goods necessary for healthcare (including medicines
destined to pregnant women, laboratory products, radiology equipment,
operating tables and surgical equipment, anaesthetics, defibrillators,
artificial breathing apparatuses, dialysis apparatuses, and pharmaceutical
stocks) and went as far as to prevent the free supply of food for newborns
and equipment for paediatric intensive care units. Cuba 's capacity to
produce vaccines it has developed is hampered by the frequent lack of
spare parts and essential components that have to be imported, as well
as water treatment centres. This embargo inflicts an unjustified suffering
of the Cuban people. The resulting shortages of many medicines not produced
in Cuba complicate the immediate and complete implementation of treatment
protocols for breast cancer, leukaemia, cardiovascular and kidney diseases,
as well as treatment of HIV. Moreover, the U.S. authority's infringements
on individual freedom of movement and scientific knowledge -restrictions
on travel of U.S. researchers, the disrespect of bilateral agreements
on Cuban researcher's visas, refusals to grant software licenses or to
satisfy the orders from Cuban libraries for books, reviews, or electronic
media of specialized scientific literature - have in fact extended the
embargo to areas formally excluded from it by law. One of the most potentially
fruitful opportunities to develop humanitarian cooperation on a basis
of solidarity between nations is therefore blocked.
The embargo is also in contradiction with the principles of the promotion
and protection of human rights, which the people of the United States
desire for themselves and for the rest of the world.
For all these reasons, this unacceptable embargo has to cease immediately.