T&T votes with US against Cuba embargo resolution

Trinidad and To­ba­go has vot­ed along­side the Unit­ed States against a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the decades-long Amer­i­can em­bar­go on Cu­ba, mark­ing a de­par­ture from the coun­try’s long­stand­ing for­eign pol­i­cy po­si­tion.

For the first time since the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly (UN­GA) be­gan vot­ing on the is­sue in 1992, T&T op­posed the res­o­lu­tion, which calls for an end to the eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial em­bar­go im­posed by the Unit­ed States against Cu­ba.

De­spite T&T’s op­po­si­tion, the res­o­lu­tion was over­whelm­ing­ly adopt­ed to­day, with 130 coun­tries vot­ing in favour, 17 against and 25 ab­stain­ing.

T&T ab­stained when the res­o­lu­tion was first in­tro­duced in 1992 but vot­ed in favour of lift­ing the em­bar­go every year there­after, in­clud­ing in 2025.

To­day’s vote there­fore rep­re­sents a shift from more than three decades of diplo­mat­ic sup­port for Cu­ba on the is­sue.

The de­ci­sion al­so puts T&T at odds with the long­stand­ing po­si­tion of sev­er­al Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­tries, which have con­sis­tent­ly called for an end to the Amer­i­can em­bar­go.

The UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly has re­peat­ed­ly adopt­ed res­o­lu­tions call­ing for the em­bar­go to be lift­ed, but the mea­sures are non-bind­ing and do not com­pel the Unit­ed States to re­move its sanc­tions against Cu­ba.

The Gov­ern­ment has not yet pub­licly ex­plained the ra­tio­nale for T&T’s vote.