Should the international community look the other way while Cubans are thrown into prison, tortured, humiliated, or expelled from their own country?
14ymedio, Karel J. Leyva, Montreal, February 14, 2026 — The modern principle of sovereignty was formulated in 17th-century Europe, after the Peace of Westphalia, with a clear objective: to limit wars between powers and establish that each state would exercise authority within its borders without external interference. Sovereignty was thus born as a mechanism to reduce international violence and stabilize a system marked by constant conflict.
Over time, this principle became a cornerstone of international law. Without the rule of non-intervention, the international system would have continued to be dominated by preventive wars and constant disputes over jurisdiction. Sovereignty established a minimum boundary: each state governs within its territory, and others may not freely intervene in its internal affairs. This principle, though imperfect, allowed for a certain degree of stability and especially protected weaker countries from more powerful ones.
However, beginning in the mid-20th century, international law introduced a decisive shift. The United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1966 International Covenants affirmed that state authority has limits when life, physical integrity, and fundamental freedoms are at stake. Sovereignty ceased to be understood as an absolute principle and began to be understood as authority subject to obligations.
That a situation occurs within a state’s borders does not mean that any action by political power is automatically justified
The principle of the Responsibility to Protect, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, clearly expresses this transformation: sovereignty implies not only rights but also responsibilities, including the obligation to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. When a state fails to fulfill that function, the international community may act, under particular circumstances.
This introduces a fundamental distinction: the fact that a situation occurs within a state’s borders does not mean that any action by political power is automatically justified. The “internal” character of a problem does not render the systematic violation of basic rights legitimate.
The Cuban case illustrates this clearly. For decades, political power has imprisoned opponents, repressed peaceful demonstrations, punished dissent through surveillance, harassment, and disproportionate sentences, and generated economic and social conditions that keep broad sectors of the population in persistent structural precariousness. These are not isolated incidents or occasional excesses but part of a system of control spanning more than six decades.
Should the international community look the other way, hiding behind a conveniently interpreted principle?
For too many years, the Cuban regime has demanded respect for national sovereignty while brutally punishing its own people. Whom does the sovereignty they defend truly protect? The Cuban nation, a nation literally plunged into darkness, forced to live with its head bowed, dominated by fear? Is the nation not rather the victim of the success of sovereignist rhetoric? Is a nation deliberately impoverished, forced to choose silence while enduring illness, hunger, misery, and pain truly sovereign?
Is the sovereignty invoked by the Cuban Government the sovereignty of a free people or rather that of unchecked power, whose sole function is to preserve itself and guarantee the survival of the brutality and cynicism of an absolutist regime?
Should the international community look the other way, hiding behind a conveniently interpreted principle, while Cubans who attempt to express themselves freely are thrown into prison, tortured, humiliated, or expelled from their own country?
A principle created to limit war between states cannot become the pretext that legitimizes the systematic violence of a totalitarian state against an entire nation. If it does, it would lose all legitimacy and moral value. The sovereignty of impunity is not the sovereignty of a nation; it is the sovereignty of a tyrant.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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