CARICOM SPLIT OVER CUBA AT UN

A deep foreign policy split has emerged in CARICOM at the United Nations, following the annual resolution vote on the United States embargo against Cuba. The outcome of this year’s vote on October 28th saw only seven Caribbean countries backing the resolution. Voting in favour of stopping the economically crippling embargo were The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname.

The only regional country that voted to keep the 66-year-long embargo in place was Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti abstained while Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Lucia were absent. In all, the resolution passed with 130 nations voting to remove the embargo, while 17 voted to retain it, and 25 abstained.

For Trinidad and Tobago, which over the past 30 years has voted to remove the embargo, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar set out to explain the policy change after her government was criticised for voting with the United States to keep it in place.

Her United National Congress(UNC) government has established close ties with the US Trump administration and supports its stance against Cuba. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar expressed support for the Cuban people but not the Cuban government, which she called a military dictatorship.

“Why should citizens of CARICOM nations enjoy the right to freely elect and change their governments while the Cuban people are denied that same democratic choice?... The exploitation of ordinary Cubans to support the lavish lives of those associated with the ruling regime has to end,” she stated.

Meanwhile, Cuba’s neighbour and longtime ally, Jamaica, which also regularly voted against the embargo, abruptly changed its position this year and abstained from voting.

Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Kamaina Johnson Smith, said that despite the abstention, their policy regarding the embargo has not changed.

“We didn’t vote against the resolution because we do not support Cuba. We continue to believe, as we have stated, that it is a unilateral action which does not accord with the UN Charter,” she stated in an interview.

“We believe more is needed than simply stating every year that the embargo should end. The circumstances in Cuba are complex; they are partly caused by the embargo, but they are also affected by the decisions that are taken by its sovereign government.”

Other significant outcomes from the UN General Assembly vote saw the United Kingdom(UK) maintaining its position by backing the resolution calling on the US to remove the embargo.

China voted similarly to the UK, while the US voted to maintain it as expected.

The annual General Assembly resolution is largely symbolic and non-binding.