Source: United Nations (video statements)
The United Nations Resident Coordinator in Cuba, Francisco Pichon, told reporters in New York that one month since United States President Donald Trump issued an executive order that created “a fuel blockade for Cuba,” its humanitarian consequences are “deepening by the day.”
Pichon said, “hat we see on the ground is not a temporary shortage, it is a more systemic energy shock that has become the primary humanitarian risk multiplier.”
The 29 January executive order had authorized the imposition of new tariffs on imports from countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to the Government of Cuba.
Pichon said, “the vulnerabilities are rapidly escalating into more acute, humanitarian risks. So, what we find, essential services being scaled back, being disrupted, and daily life for the ordinary people increasingly becoming more fragile.”
Following a US Supreme Court ruling that declared most of the tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) illegal, a new executive order was issued on 20 February removing the tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba.
The Resident Coordinator said, “although the US government eliminated the specific tariff mechanisms threatening countries which supply oil to Cuba with tariffs – this as a result of the decision of the Supreme Court last week – the national emergency declared on January 29th remains in effect.”
He noted that additional sanctions to countries that provide oil to Cuba are expected and said, “Cuba continues, in fact, to be designated as an unusual and extraordinary threat to the US national security.”
Pichon said, “Cuba depends 90 percent on fossil fuels for energy generation and there is a significant deficit of more than 30 percent of the minimum demand that is required. So, the oil that is available locally, that is produced locally – and I think there might be questions about the capacity of the country to refine it in a moment like this – does help maintain electricity generation to a minimum level.”