Trafficking in Persons and Cuba’s Labor Export Program

Each year, the Cuban government sends tens of thousands of workers around the globe under multi-year cooperation agreements negotiated with receiving countries.  According to reporting from the Cuban government, there were roughly 28,000 workers in over 60 countries by the end of 2021.  The greatest number of Cuban workers in foreign countries are medical professionals.  The COVID-19 pandemic increased the need for medical workers in many places around the world, and the Cuban government helped fill the gap by increasing the number of its medical workers abroad, including through the use of its Henry Reeve Brigade, which Cuba first initiated in 2005 to respond to natural disasters and epidemics.  There are serious concerns with Cuba’s recruitment and retention practices surrounding this program, exacerbating workers’ vulnerability to being subject to forced labor.  In the 2023 TIP report, the Department carefully documented government-affiliated Cuban workers’ current or recent presence in 56 countries around the world.  According to the Cuban government, medical professionals compose 75 percent of its exported workforce.  Experts estimate the Cuban government collects $6 billion to $8 billion annually from its export of services, principally the foreign medical missions’ program.  

The conditions of each medical mission vary from country to country.  However, in 2021, 1,111 former participants filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court and the UN, claiming the Cuban government exploited them and forced them to work in the labor export program.  The complaint stated 75 percent of these participants did not volunteer for the program, 33 percent never saw a contract, 69 percent did not know their final destination, 38 percent had their passport confiscated by Cuban officials once they arrived at their destination, 76 percent had “minders” and were subjected to surveillance, 76 percent could not freely associate with locals, 79 percent had restrictions on their movement, 91 percent were told they could not return to Cuba if they defected, 75 percent suffered threats or witnessed coworkers being threatened, and 40 percent were separated from their children as punishment for defecting.  Many medical professionals reported being sexually abused by their Cuban government supervisors.  While the medical missions remain the most prevalent, the government profited from other similarly coercive labor export programs, including those involving teachers, artists, athletes and coaches, engineers, forestry technicians, and nearly 7,000 merchant mariners across the world.

Cuban government officials promote the program as altruistic, seeking new countries to partner with and increasing profit at the expense of often vulnerable and disempowered workers. International observers and former participants report that Cuban government officials force or coerce individuals to participate and remain in the labor export program by subjecting workers to inherently coercive laws and regulations that manipulate workers and violate their rights.

The Cuban Ministry of Interior labels workers who do not return to the island upon completing their assignment as “deserters,” a category that under Cuban immigration law deems them as “undesirable.”  The government bans workers labeled as “deserters” and “undesirables” from returning to Cuba for eight years, preventing them from visiting their family in Cuba.  In addition, the government categorizes Cuban nationals who do not return to the country within 24 months as having “emigrated.”  Individuals who emigrate lose all their citizen protections, rights under Cuban law, and any property left behind. These government policies and legal provisions, taken together, coerce workers and punish those seeking to exercise freedom of movement.  A report published by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child noted concern over Cuba’s policy to prohibit parents who terminated a civilian contract abroad from reuniting with their children.  According to an international NGO, by 2021, the Cuban government had sanctioned 40,000 professionals under these provisions, and in 2022, there were approximately 5,000 children forcibly separated from their parents due to the government’s policies surrounding the program.

Each worker should:

Host governments should: 

The Government of Cuba should: 

The Palermo Protocol calls on governments to proactively address trafficking crimes; however, some governments are part of the problem, directly compelling their citizens into sex trafficking or forced labor.  From forced labor in local or national public work projects, military operations, economically important sectors, or as part of government-funded projects or missions abroad to sexual slavery on government compounds, officials use their power to exploit their nationals. To extract this work or service, governments coerce by threatening the withdrawal of public benefits, withholding salaries, failing to adhere to limits on national service, manipulating the lack of legal status of stateless individuals and other minority groups, threatening to punish family members, or conditioning services, food, or freedom of movement on labor or sex.  The U.S. Department of State has reported on these concerns among Cuba’s medical missions since 2010 and assessed Cuba to have such a policy or pattern of trafficking through this program since the 2020 TIP Report.