Mr. President:
The United States is the only country in the history of the Human Rights Council that has refused to participate in a cycle of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) failing even to submit its national report.
This seriously undermines the integrity and universality of this mechanism, which is a fundamental pillar of the international human rights system.
The United States has an obligation to undergo review, just like all other nations. Its refusal to do so undermines the principle of the sovereign equality of States.
This conduct is not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of attacks by the United States against multilateralism and international law.
We are dealing with a predatory and irresponsible superpower that proclaims an alleged, exceptional, and supreme right to conquest and the use of force as a natural, everyday way of operating.
Cuba rejects the non-cooperation of the United States with the UPR and its refusal to submit to international scrutiny.
That country proclaims itself superior and presumes to act as a judge of human rights in other nations, while evading its own obligation to be held accountable before the international community.
The double standards and hypocrisy could not be more evident.
The United States government seeks to avoid the review process so as not to hear the truth about its grave human rights violations—both within and beyond its borders. It intends to continue committing these violations with total impunity.
Multiple special procedures of the Council and various treaty bodies have extensively documented these violations.
That government is aggressively implementing a racist agenda that dehumanizes and criminalizes migrants.
Xenophobic rhetoric—including that from high-level public figures—is being normalized, spreading negative stereotypes about migrants in a nation built by migrants.
Armed, masked agents patrol the streets, carrying out violent and abusive roundups of individuals. Mass deportations are conducted without due process. Young children are separated from their parents. Planes filled with migrants and refugees are sent to third countries with which they have no ties.
Virtually all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have been dismantled.
In the United States, a culture of violence is deeply entrenched. Firearms are the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the country. The National Guard has been deployed in several cities under the pretext of combating "insurrection."
Widespread police brutality persists. Police use lethal force against at least 300,000 people every year. Police shootings injure and claim the lives of thousands.
Black people are three times more likely than white people to be killed by police gunfire. This is no coincidence. There is a distinct racial pattern in the country that subjects minorities—particularly African Americans and Hispanics—to brutal discrimination.
African Americans have a life expectancy five years shorter than that of white people, an infant mortality rate more than twice as high, and a maternal mortality rate three times higher.
The United States has the largest prison population in the world. While the country accounts for 5% of the global population, it holds 20% of the world’s incarcerated people. On any given day, two million people are held in U.S. jails and prisons.
Nearly 60% of those incarcerated are African American or Hispanic. A staggering number of children are imprisoned each year. Among children sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, 61% are African American.
Medical costs are rising uncontrollably. The United States is the only high-income country without universal healthcare coverage and has the lowest life expectancy within its peer group.
In that country, protection mechanisms for LGBTI individuals are being dismantled, and attacks on reproductive rights are intensifying.
In a nation that proclaims itself the champion of democracy, money controls politics. In the recently concluded 2026 legislative elections alone, a record $11.6 billion was spent.
The United States is responsible for numerous illegal military interventions around the world. It is complicit in the genocide in Gaza and has carried out hundreds of extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the Pacific—ostensibly in response to alleged international crimes that have never been proven.
The U.S. imposes sanctions on mandate-holders of this Council simply because they refuse to yield to its pressure.
It is, by far, the country that imposes the greatest number of unilateral coercive measures, affecting the lives of millions of people globally.
A case in point is its obsessive war of economic strangulation against Cuba, which has reached the level of inhumane collective punishment. The U.S. seeks to provoke a humanitarian tragedy to destabilize our country and achieve its own political objectives—a massive, flagrant, and systematic violation of the human rights of the Cuban people.
Given its shameful track record of violations and abuses, the United States should refrain from stigmatizing others. We cannot accept such conduct as inevitable, nor should we normalize it.
For these reasons, Cuba supports draft decision L.1, and we call upon the other members of the Council to do the same.
We demand that the United States government immediately fulfill its obligation to participate in the Universal Periodic Review, to be held accountable, and to accept responsibility for its grave human rights violations.
Thank you very much.