OCLEP October 2025 evidence confirms that Cuba’s medical brigades abroad operate as a state-managed forced-labor and trafficking system. The pattern of wage retention, document confiscation, intimidation, and ethical coercion is now extensively documented. Host countries contracting these missions without independent oversight are complicit in enabling exploitation contrary to ILO and UN standards.

See summary table here

See OCLEP October 2025 report here

October 2025 OCLEP evidence confirms that Cuba’s domestic healthcare system remains in a state of systemic collapse. By redirecting personnel and resources abroad for revenue generation, the Cuban government has effectively dismantled its own public-health foundations, leaving citizens dependent on humanitarian aid and informal supply chains for survival.

See anatlytical table here

See October 2025 OCLEP report

The November 2025 OCLEP evidence confirms that Cuba’s medical missions operate as a state-administered system of forced labor and trafficking. The persistent combination of wage retention, document confiscation, coercive controls, falsification mandates, intimidation, sexual-coercion risks, and post-mission vulnerability constitutes a structural pattern rather than isolated abuse. Host-country governments that contract these programs without independent oversight risk becoming complicit in enabling forced labor, contrary to ILO and UN standards.

See summary table here

See OCLEP November 2025 report here

The November 2025 field-report cycle reinforces that Cuba’s medical missions—and parallel labor-export arrangements in construction, culture, maritime work, and industrial sectors across all regions examined, the evidence reveals practices that violate core international conventions on forced labor, freedom of movement, family unity, and the right to fair and safe working conditions including but not limited to:

·   American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR)

·   Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)

·   International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)

·   International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR)

·   International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 29

·   International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 105

·   Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)

See summary table here

See OCLEP November 2025 report here

• ·       Evidence from 13 November 2025 field reports and survivor consultations shows that coercive practices—passport confiscation, wage expropriation, movement restrictions, surveillance, and family reprisals—are built into the design of medical missions and replicated across construction, cultural, industrial, and maritime sectors.

• ·       Cuban state enterprises (SMC, UCCM, Servimed) control recruitment, deployment, financial flows, and disciplinary measures, retaining 70–90% of workers’ salaries and enforcing conditions incompatible with international labor and human-rights standards.

• ·       Participation in missions reflects economic compulsion, not free choice. The growing dependence of professionals on overseas deployments strengthens the coercive leverage of Cuban authorities.

• ·       Cases documented in Italy and Canada—though outside OCLEP’s direct collection—illustrate that Cuban forced-labor schemes are expanding into jurisdictions presumed to have strong protections, revealing gaps in host-country due diligence.

• ·       States that contract Cuban labor without ensuring independent oversight, contract transparency, and worker protections risk becoming de facto enablers of forced labor, contrary to obligations under ILO, UN, and Inter-American frameworks.

• ·       Exiled professionals continue to describe coercion with clarity and consistency despite security risks, underscoring the need for protective mechanisms, documentation support, and pathways for safe reporting.

See analytical summaries here

See OCLEP reports

Despite fundamentally different methodologies and institutional mandates, OCLEP and BIICL converge on the same core findings: Cuban medical missions operate through systemic coercive practices that meet international indicators of forced labor and raise serious trafficking concerns. OCLEP’s testimony-driven, real-time monitoring reveals the lived experience and human cost of these practices, while BIICL’s longitudinal legal analysis explains how contractual frameworks and dominant humanitarian narratives have enabled their persistence. The convergence of bottom-up and top-down evidence substantially strengthens the credibility and robustness of both analyses.

See comparative table and covergence matrix

See BIICL report here

See OCLEP reports here

(BIIC