GENEVA, Switzerland (AFP) — United Nations (UN) rights experts said Tuesday that escalating United States (US) “threats and coercion” against Cuba smacked of “colonial-era practices”, which they warned undermined international peace and security.

The United States has heaped pressure on Cuba since January, with President Donald Trump musing about overthrowing the country’s leadership, as US forces did in Venezuela that month.

“Efforts to change the constitutional order of a sovereign state through threats and coercion echo colonial-era practices,” three independent United Nations experts said in a statement.

They slammed Trump’s declaration following the abduction of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro in January 2026 of his so-called “Donroe Doctrine”, asserting US predominance over the Western Hemisphere.

“Statements by the US president regarding the ‘honour of taking Cuba’ reflect a deeply concerning strategy of coercion against a sovereign state,” said the experts, who are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself.

“This assertion is not mere rhetoric, but part of a broader strategy involving the long-standing embargo on Cuba, its listing as a state-sponsor of terrorism, the recent fuel blockade and the imposition of coercive measures on third parties,” they said.

The communist Caribbean country has been under a US trade embargo since 1962, which is often blamed for shortages of food and medicine.

In January, Cuba stopped receiving oil from its ally Venezuela, and the US has threatened sanctions on anyone selling oil to the country.

US officials also brought an indictment against Cuba’s former president Raul Castro, in a case that dates back to 1996, fuelling speculation that Trump would try to topple the communist state.

Tuesday’s statement warned that such “misuse of domestic judicial proceedings against sitting or former heads of state, as an instrument of coercive foreign policy, constitutes an abuse of process that violates the principles of sovereign equality and self-determination under the UN Charter”.

The experts also branded the recent deployment of a US aircraft carrier and escorting warships in the Caribbean an “additional element of unlawful coercion”.

They called on Washington to immediately halt all threats against Cuba’s sovereignty, and urged the UN Security Council and General Assembly to urgently address the threats against Cuba “as a matter affecting international peace and security”.