UN Rights Chief Says U.S. Sanctions on Cuba Are Causing Deaths
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said Monday the Trump administration’s fuel blockade and recent expansion of extraterritorial sanctions are "directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable."
"Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable," Türk said. "These sanctions must be lifted immediately."
The Trump administration's energy blockade has contributed to rolling blackouts that have disrupted transportation, food production, water distribution and hospital operations. Additional sanctions targeting foreign companies and financial institutions have further impacted the island's access to essential goods and services.
Türk rejected the notion that the consequences of these measures are confined to only the Cuban government.
"Such severe sanctions packages that target entire sectors of an economy and produce broad, indiscriminate and harsh effects on populations are incompatible with basic principles of international human rights law," he said.
The statement may be the strongest condemnation yet from a senior UN official of the Trump administration's Cuba policy.
Türk’s words echo what Cuban patients, doctors and healthcare workers told us in the documentary Health Under Sanction that we produced for Al Jazeera’s People & Power.
