The resolution passed 130-17 with 25 abstentions, the weakest backing in two decades. T&T is the first CARICOM country ever to vote against it.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – Trinidad and Tobago voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the US embargo on Cuba on Wednesday, becoming the first CARICOM country ever to do so. The resolution was adopted with 130 votes in favor, 17 against and 25 abstentions, the weakest backing in two decades, UN News reported. Last year it passed 165 to 7, with 12 abstentions. T&T joined the United States and 15 other countries in opposing it.
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, SC, defended the vote in a statement on X, saying it reflects the Government’s commitment to democracy, freedom and human rights. She said Trinidad and Tobago will not support a “military dictatorship” in Cuba and that Cubans deserve the right to freely elect their government. She said the US government has been leading a campaign for democracy in Cuba and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban heritage, is right that political reforms are needed for Cuba to prosper.
The prime minister asked why citizens of CARICOM countries should be able to elect and change their governments while Cubans are denied that choice. She said the Government empathizes with the hardship of the Cuban people but that, for years, compassion for them has been used to defend a political system that denies them democratic freedoms. She also said leaders of the Cuban government and their families live in luxury while ordinary Cubans suffer, a claim her statement did not support with evidence.
Persad-Bissessar said Trinidad and Tobago respects other nations’ right to set their own foreign policy and expects the same respect for its own. She criticized people in Trinidad and Tobago who support the Cuban political system, saying they would not support dictatorship at home and that it should not be romanticized as a revolutionary struggle. The post opened and closed with statements from her party, the United National Congress, which commended nations that stand in solidarity with the Cuban people.
The vote is a break with the country’s record. T&T abstained when the resolution was first introduced in 1992 and voted in favor every year since, including in 2025, CNC3 reported. In July, it abstained from a procedural vote to authorize an extraordinary UN debate on the embargo. Before Wednesday’s vote, 23 civil society groups and former Foreign Minister Amery Browne urged the Government to vote yes, and 11 former Caribbean heads of government, including former Prime Minister Keith Rowley, signed an open letter urging support, according to Caribbean360. The prime minister criticized the letter on Tuesday.
Of the 14 CARICOM members with UN seats, T&T was the only one to vote against. Seven voted in favor: the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname. Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti abstained, after voting in favor last year. Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and Saint Lucia did not vote, according to the UN voting board.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the result a victory for Cuba despite what he described as crude pressure from the United States. Regional analyst Julian Rogers wrote in a Caribbean Bridges commentary that the vote reflects closer alignment between Port of Spain and Washington.
The resolution is not legally binding. It calls on the United States to end its economic, commercial and financial embargo on Cuba, which only the US Congress can lift.
This report draws on information from UN News, TTT News, CNC3, CMC, Caribbean360 and Caribbean Bridges.