OCLEP - News

Cuba’s Forced-Labor Crisis Deepens: Normalized Abuse Amid Healthcare Collapse and Persistent Impunity

January 7, 2026

The Observatory for Cuban Labor Export Programs (OCLEP), under the U.S. Department of State-funded Combatting Forced Labor in Cuban Medical Missions (CFLCMM) program releases its December 2025 report, documenting new evidence that Cuba’s forced-labor system is systemic, continuous, and self-reinforcing—linking domestic collapse, international medical missions, and transnational exploitation.

The report draws on ten new on-island field reports from December 2025 that include 44 community-level testimonies collected during that month. These findings are analyzed alongside 133 testimonies gathered between July and November 2025 from current and former Cuban health professionals involved in state labor-export programs, as well as third party independent legal research and investigative journalism, demonstrating that forced labor associated with Cuban medical missions cannot be understood in isolation.

December field reports reveal an unprecedented public-health and sanitation crisis across Cuba. Widespread garbage accumulation, water shortages, power outages, and uncontrolled outbreaks of dengue, chikungunya, Oropouche, and gastrointestinal diseases have produced conditions of acute vulnerability. Forty-four individuals, including health workers, public service employees, informal vendors, community residents, and local officials, provided testimonies describing how illness, service collapse, and poverty erode meaningful choice and compel acceptance of abusive working and survival conditions. These findings demonstrate that forced-labor risk begins on the island, long before overseas deployment.

Consistent with earlier OCLEP findings, the December report confirms that Cuban medical missions function as one component of a larger state-organized labor-export system. Across the July–December 2025 dataset, OCLEP documented all 11 ILO forced-labor indicators, including wage withholding, movement restriction, surveillance, intimidation, passport control, excessive overtime, and evidence of physical and sexual coercion. These practices are not isolated abuses, but predictable outcomes of a system designed to generate foreign revenue while maintaining control over a highly skilled workforce.

As part of its December analysis, OCLEP reviewed independent comprehensive research produced by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). BIICL’s longitudinal examination of bilateral agreements and institutional practice from approximately 2010–2024 independently validates OCLEP’s testimony-based findings and highlights a critical enabling factor: the positive humanitarian framing of Cuban medical missions in international fora. This dominant narrative has obscured coercive practices, delayed accountability, and allowed documented abuses to be treated as “allegations” rather than findings requiring response.

December reporting further shows that coercion does not end with mission exit. Investigative journalism documents how former medical workers and other Cuban professionals enter irregular migration routes, facing legal precarity, wage theft, unsafe working conditions, and exploitation. Migration emerges not as a free alternative, but as a coercively induced survival strategy, extending forced-labor risk across borders.

Why This Matters

The December 2025 evidence reveals a clear pattern:
domestic collapse generates vulnerability; labor export exploits that vulnerability; international narratives delay accountability; and migration perpetuates exploitation.

Together, these findings underscore the urgency of coordinated international action, stronger host-State due diligence, and survivor-centered accountability mechanisms.

See full report here

Previously:

October 3, 2025

Cuba’s “Medical Power” in Collapse: New Observatory Report Reveals Systemic Exploitation

The first report of the Observatory for Cuban Labor Export Programs (OCLEP) documents a dual humanitarian crisis: the collapse of Cuba’s domestic health system and the trafficking of tens of thousands of Cuban doctors abroad under conditions that meet international definitions of forced labor.

Based on 28 grassroots reports and more than 60 individual testimonies collected between July and August 2025, the findings describe a country where hospitals and clinics stand empty while the government is proudly claiming that over 22,000 Cuban doctors are currently active in more than 50 countries. Independent estimates, however, suggest that the actual figure is considerably higher — potentially reaching 40,000 to 50,000 or more, depending on how missions and personnel are counted. Arriving at a precise number remains difficult due to the lack of transparency from all parties involved — both the Cuban government and the host countries that contract these missions.”exports dozens of thousands of medical professionals to more than 50 countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Health System in Ruins

Inside Cuba, healthcare has collapsed:

Over 12,000 doctors and 7,000 nurses left the system in 2023 alone, either emigrating or reassigned abroad.
Public health receives just 1.8–2% of the national budget, while tourism and real estate enjoy 20 times more investment.
More than 30% of field reports described child victims denied surgery, left untreated for tumors, or dependent on donations for survival.
Ambulances often take days to arrive, resulting in preventable deaths; consultations are carried out by medical students instead of trained doctors.
Families must bring their own syringes, antibiotics, anesthesia, and even bed sheets; over half of all reports mention reliance on black-market or donated supplies.

Extrapolating from official statistics and the exodus of medical personnel, experts estimate that millions of Cubans—potentially more than half the population—lack reliable access to healthcare today. Children and the elderly are disproportionately affected, with testimonies of untreated brain tumors, hip deformities, and malnutrition.

Doctors as Export Commodities

Abroad, Cuban medical brigades generate billions of dollars annually for Havana but under coercive conditions:

Host countries pay $3,000–$10,000 per doctor per month, but Cuban professionals receive only 3–30% of this income.
Testimonies confirm at least 8 of the 11 ILO forced labor indicators, including passport confiscation, surveillance, wage retention, threats, and curfews.
The Palermo Protocol definition of trafficking applies: doctors are recruited under deception, transported abroad, and exploited in conditions they cannot escape.
In Venezuela, doctors report being forced to treat armed groups at gunpoint; in Mexico, contracts until 2028 remain secret, with state institutions admitting they cannot verify how much money reaches the doctors themselves.
In one documented case in the Bahamas, 92% of salaries were withheld.

A State-Sponsored Crisis

The OCLEP report concludes that Cuba’s regime operates a “trafficking-for-labor economy”, prioritizing foreign currency inflows over the health of its citizens. International donations, from NGOs or diaspora groups, are frequently diverted to elite hospitals for foreigners while ordinary Cubans are left with nothing.

The human toll is staggering: if 50–60% of Cuba’s 11 million citizens now face inadequate healthcare, between 5–6 million Cubans may be suffering directly from the collapse of the public health system.

Call for Accountability

The report urges urgent international action, including:

Independent scrutiny of Cuban medical contracts by host governments.
Conditioning of foreign aid on transparency and non-diversion.
Use of U.S. Magnitsky-style and EU anti-trafficking sanctions to hold perpetrators accountable.
Amplification of Cuban victims’ testimonies before the ILO, UN, and Inter-American human rights bodies.

“Cuba exports doctors as commodities, while children die at home waiting for gauze and antibiotics,” one testimony summarized. The Observatory warns that without decisive action, the regime’s model will continue to violate basic rights and fuel a humanitarian emergency in one of the world’s most celebrated yet hollowed-out health systems