The Context
203 people. That is the number of arbitrary detentions linked directly to police and state surveillance operations in Cuba during the first half of 2025, as documented by Cubalex and cited by Human Rights Watch. By October 2025, the prisoner count had swelled to nearly 700 political prisoners. This is not a distant political squabble. It is a machine. A state surveillance apparatus, built on a monopoly of telecoms and internet access, that the U.S. State Department confirms is ‘pervasive’ and routinely feeds into criminal cases and reprisals against anyone exercising their human rights. The UN Special Rapporteur, Amnesty International, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights all agree: in Cuba, state surveillance is the enabler of systematic repression. For any director whose company provides technology, infrastructure, or data services into this environment, the clock is ticking.
The Risk
The risk here is not theoretical. It is visceral. It is the smell of a brand being burned alive in the court of public opinion. The documented pattern is clear: state-developed software gives the government access to users’ personal data. That data is used to identify critics. Those critics are arrested. They are held incommunicado. Some are tortured. The U.S. human rights report states that ‘no known prosecutions’ of officials for these abuses exist. This is a closed loop of impunity. If your company’s tools or platforms are even tangentially linked to this chain, you are not just a vendor. You become an enabler. The psychosocial damage is immediate: your brand is associated with oppression. Shareholder activists will not be kind. ESG funds will divest. And under the emerging EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, or a UK-style duty of care, directors who knowingly or recklessly facilitated this environment may find themselves personally named in civil suits. The reputation of your board is the asset on the line.
The Control
The solution is not to pull out overnight. It is to perform a forensic, transparent, and immediate human rights due diligence review of every contract and relationship in Cuba. You must map the data flow. You must identify the end-user of your technology. If that end-user is a state security apparatus that operates with documented impunity, you must have a credible, enforceable exit strategy. Your board needs a clear, public-facing position on human rights that aligns with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Silence is no longer a strategy. It is a liability.
The Challenge
These are the critical questions you should be raising at the board table:
| Can we map the exact data flow and end-user for every technology or service we provide in Cuba, and do we have documented evidence that it is not being used to enable arbitrary detention or surveillance? | |
| What is our public, board-approved human rights position on state surveillance regimes, and how does it align with the UN Guiding Principles and our own ESG commitments? | |
| If a civil suit or activist campaign were launched tomorrow alleging we aided human rights abuses in Cuba, what specific evidence would we present to demonstrate we exercised reasonable due diligence and oversight? |