US sanctions pushing Cuba into full-blown crisis: UN experts

Cars drive down a street in Havana, Cuba, Aug. 5. EPA-Yonhap

GENEVA — United Nations rights experts on Thursday warned the international community to act swiftly to prevent U.S. sanctions pushing Cuba into a "full-blown crisis."

While Cuba has been under a U.S. trade embargo since 1962, President Donald Trump has drastically ramped up pressure in recent months, cutting off fuel supplies and threatening to take over the island.

Washington's imposition of an effective oil blockade and other sanctions have worsened economic conditions, led to major shortages and contributed to widespread power outages.

Energy, transport, irrigation and basic services are failing, disproportionately affecting women, children, older people and other vulnerable groups, the U.N. experts said in a statement.

"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.

Since Washington launched its energy blockade in January, living conditions on the Caribbean island have worsened markedly.

For millions of Cubans, getting water and food, getting around and even sleeping through the night have become daily challenges.

They said U.N. agencies in Cuba had warned of mounting risks of food insecurity and shortages of medicines and basic necessities.

"Food must never be used as an instrument of political pressure. 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," the experts said.

"The U.S. government must cease all threats and hostile acts against Cuba's sovereignty and revoke all measures it has imposed on the country that stand contrary to international law."

They urged the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly of nations in New York to address the threats urgently as a matter of international peace and security.

The statement was written by the special rapporteurs on development, the right to food and the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures, among others.

U.N. experts are independent figures mandated by the Human Rights Council.

They do not, therefore, speak for the United Nations itself.