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UN Human Rights Chief Calls for End of Trump Oil Embargo on Cuba as Crisis Deepens
The demand came after a group of United Nations experts condemned the embargo as "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order."
Feb 13, 2026
The United Nations' human rights chief on Friday called on the Trump administration to lift its oil embargo against Cuba as the humanitarian crisis on the island deepens, with fuel shortages disrupting critical functions on the island and food and medicine shortages leaving families desperate for relief.
Marta Hurtado, a spokesperson for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk, said in a statement that "we are extremely worried about Cuba’s deepening socio-economic crisis—amid a decades-long financial and trade embargo, extreme weather events, and the recent US measures restricting oil shipments."
"This is having an increasingly severe impact on the human rights of people in Cuba," Hurtado said. "Given the dependence of health, food, and water systems on imported fossil fuels, the current oil scarcity has put the availability of essential services at risk nationwide. Intensive care units and emergency rooms are compromised, as are the production, delivery, and storage of vaccines, blood products, and other temperature-sensitive medications."
The spokesperson noted that more than 80% of Cuba's water-pumping equipment depends on electricity, which has been undermined by widespread power cuts stemming from fuel shortages.
"The fuel shortage has disrupted the rationing system and the regulated basic food basket, and has affected social protection networks—school feeding, maternity homes, and nursing homes—with the most vulnerable groups being disproportionately impacted," said Hurtado. "Access to essential goods and services, including food, water, medicine, and adequate fuel and electricity, should always be safeguarded, as they are fundamental in modern societies to the right to life and the ability to enjoy many other rights."
In the face of the growing humanitarian catastrophe, Turk "reiterates his call on all states to lift unilateral sectoral measures, given their broad and indiscriminate impact on the population," Hurtado said.
"Policy goals cannot justify actions that in themselves violate human rights," she added.
The US has been economically suffocating Cuba for decades, but the Trump administration intensified the assault last month by cutting the island off from its primary source of oil—Venezuela—and threatening to slap tariffs on countries that send fuel to the beleaguered Caribbean nation, which has long been in the crosshairs of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other right-wing supporters of regime change.
"Cuba is ready to fall," US President Donald Trump declared in early January after his administration kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
In a statement on Thursday, a group of UN human rights experts said that Trump's January 29 executive order imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba represents "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order."
“It is an extreme form of unilateral economic coercion with extraterritorial effects, through which the United States seeks to exert coercion on the sovereign state of Cuba and compel other sovereign third States to alter their lawful commercial relations, under threat of punitive trade measures,” the experts said. "A democratic international order cannot be reconciled with practices whereby one State claims the authority to dictate the internal policies and economic relations of others through threats and coercion."
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Earth Hurtling Toward 'Hothouse Trajectory,' Scientists Warn in Tipping Points Analysis
"Existing climate mitigation approaches, including scaling up renewable energy and protecting carbon-storing ecosystems, are critical to limit the increase in global temperatures," said the lead author.
Feb 12, 2026
In the lead-up to the Trump administration effectively destroying the US Environmental Protection Agency's ability to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, an international team of scientists warned Wednesday that "Earth's climate is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia."
Various institutions, including in the United States, have confirmed that 2025 was among the hottest years on record, and January continued that trend. Meanwhile, governments and polluting industries have repeatedly refused to impose policies that adequately heed experts' calls for action.
"In an effort to mitigate dangerous levels of warming, the Paris Agreement formalized the aim of limiting warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, yet global temperatures have recently breached this limit for 12 consecutive months, coinciding with record-breaking heat, wildfires, floods, and other extremes," the scientists noted Wednesday in the journal One Earth.
They wrote that "crossing critical temperature thresholds may trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks and tipping dynamics that amplify warming and destabilize distant Earth system components. Uncertain tipping thresholds make precaution essential, as crossing them could commit the planet to a hothouse trajectory with long-lasting and potentially irreversible consequences."
A "hothouse trajectory," they wrote, is "a pathway in which self-reinforcing feedbacks push the climate system past a point of no return, committing the planet to substantially higher long-term temperatures, even if emissions are later reduced."
"Sixteen major tipping elements have been identified, 10 of which could add to global temperature if triggered," the experts detailed. "Tipping may already be underway or could occur soon for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, boreal permafrost, mountain glaciers, and parts of the Amazon rainforest."
As an example, they pointed to ice melt in the Arctic, explaining that the resulting water "could perturb the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is already showing signs of weakening. A weakened AMOC could alter global atmospheric circulation, shifting tropical rain belts and drying parts of the Amazon. This cascade of events could trigger large-scale Amazon forest dieback, with major consequences for the region's carbon storage and biodiversity."
Concerned about the Point of No Return? Today we published a paper on the risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory. You can read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mbW49C~Iu...
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— Prof William Ripple (@williamripple.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 2:43 PM
The team of eight was led by William Ripple, who has previously emphasized alongside other experts that "we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster" and "fossil fuels—and the fossil fuel industry and its enablers—are driving a multitude of interlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth."
Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University (OSU), said in a Wednesday statement that "after a million years of oscillating between ice ages separated by warmer periods, the Earth's climate stabilized more than 11,000 years ago, enabling agriculture and complex societies."
"We're now moving away from that stability and could be entering a period of unprecedented climate change," he stressed. "Existing climate mitigation approaches, including scaling up renewable energy and protecting carbon-storing ecosystems, are critical to limit the increase in global temperatures."
Study co-author Christopher Wolf, a former OSU postdoctoral researcher who is now a scientist with Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates (TERA), noted that already, "climate model simulations suggest the recent 12-month breach indicates the long-term average temperature increase is at or near 1.5°C."
"It's likely that global temperatures are as warm as, or warmer than, at any point in the last 125,000 years and that climate change is advancing faster than many scientists predicted," he said.
"Policymakers and the public remain largely unaware of the risks posed by what would effectively be a point-of-no-return transition," Wolf added. "And while averting the hothouse trajectory won't be easy, it's much more achievable than trying to backtrack once we're on it."
🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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— PIK_climate (@pik-potsdam.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 11:52 AM
The team's warnings came in the wake of Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump claiming in a United Nations speech last year that climate change is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world," and ditching dozens of relevant organizations and treaties, including the Paris Agreement.
On Thursday, the Trump administration continued its war on the climate, revoking the "endangerment finding" that allowed the EPA to pass regulations fighting the global emergency—which was forcefully condemned by scientists and activists.
"In case there was any remaining doubt, the truth is very clear: Trump cares nothing for the health and well-being of our communities or our climate," said Erin Doran, senior staff attorney at the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. "He is concerned only with making more money for the billionaire fossil fuel polluters that help to fund his dangerous political agenda."
"The notion that the EPA shouldn't regulate climate emissions is inconsistent with the law, the science, and the realities of the climate crisis," Doran added. "EPA is charged with protecting human health and the environment, yet this rule does neither, benefiting only the fossil fuel industry at our expense. It's absurd, and we'll be fighting back."
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AOC to Offer 'Perspective Not Often Heard' at Munich Security Conference
The progressive US congresswoman "is expected to decry the influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests at the expense of the working class," according to one journalist.
Feb 12, 2026
Amid growing speculation that Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could parlay her rising clout in the Democratic Party into a run for higher office, the New Yorker is set to speak Friday at a key annual international security summit in Germany.
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) will address the 62nd Munich Security Conference as one of numerous representatives of the Democratic Party. In addition to other members of Congress, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, two names frequently floated as possible 2028 presidential candidates, are also speaking at the conference.
According to NBC News, the democratic socialist congresswoman is slated to speak on two panels—one concerning the "future of US foreign policy" and the other about the "rise of populism."
Ocasio-Cortez is expected to offer a very different vision of US global leadership from that of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the latter of whom will lead the American delegation in Munich.
"She is expected to decry the influence of billionaires and oligarchic interests at the expense of the working class," Washington Post reporter John Hudson said Thursday on X.
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy an an informal adviser to Ocasio-Cortez, told the Washington Post Thursday that the congresswoman "brings an understanding of the way that oligarchy and corruption are part of the problem in our foreign policy and have been for a long time."
“This is an opportunity to hear from a progressive leader who represents a perspective not often heard at the Munich Security Conference,” he added.
AOC on the Munich Security Conference: I think it’s important for the world to understand—and for all of us to communicate—the full scope of who we are as Americans: that there is an alternative vision and a future that does not require a zero-sum mentality and can help people. pic.twitter.com/PsSjLDJwdD
— Acyn (@Acyn) February 12, 2026
In a separate interview with NBC News, Duss said of Ocasio-Cortez:
Trump has obviously turned the US into an antagonist of Europe. We’ve seen right-wing populism grow in Europe and around the world. Since her first days in Congress, she’s been sounding the alarm that people are hurting. Governments are failing. When people can’t find jobs or afford basic needs like housing and healthcare, they will turn to easy solutions like blaming immigrants, blaming LGBTQ people. This is driving right-wing populism.
Last year, another progressive US lawmaker, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), spoke at the Munich Security Conference, urging his audience to “stand tall against right-wing extremism” in a sharp rebuke of Vice President JD Vance's admonition to European leaders to accommodate far-right parties like the neo-Nazi-rooted Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) welcomed Ocasio-Cortez's trip to Munich, telling NBC News: "I’ve always said that she is a national and an international voice. She’s young, articulate, clear-headed, represents not only the present but the future."
“I predict someday she will become president of the United States," Espaillat added. "I’ve called her ‘madam president’ before."
Ocasio-Cortez has faced mounting speculation and calls to consider a future primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) or even a White House run.
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