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The United Nations’ top human rights official has called for the US to immediately lift the sanctions it has tightened on Cuba this year.

Getting into it: In a statement Monday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned that the fuel restrictions and recent extraterritorial sanctions, taken together, “are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable.” He added that “children are dying because doctors lack access to essential medical supplies and medicines,” and called the situation “unacceptable” and the sanctions “incompatible with basic principles of international human rights law.”

Türk’s office pointed to alarming public health data to back up the warning. According to the figures cited, the survival rate for kids with cancer has collapsed from 85% to 65% since the fuel restrictions kicked in, and infant deaths have doubled to 9.9 per 1,000 births. Essential medicines are down to roughly 30% of normal supply, food production has reportedly dropped by 60%, and blackouts now routinely run past 20 hours a day.

This all comes after Trump declared a national emergency and cut off Cuba’s fuel by severing supplies from Venezuela, branding the island an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and threatening tariffs on any country that sold it oil. Then in May came more brutal sanctions hitting entire sectors and reaching beyond Cuba’s borders to shippers, insurers, traders, and financial institutions, followed this month by additional sanctions targeting top Cuban officials (including the president).

The cumulative effect, Türk said, has left Cuba “almost disconnected from international payment systems,” with companies pulling out, airlines reducing flights, and major shippers withdrawing, leaving more than 3,000 metric tons of food aid stranded, all of it compounding into what he called “a perfect storm” ahead of summer heat and hurricane season.

Despite this, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has framed the designations as a way to cut Cuba’s communist regime and military off from what he called “illicit assets.” Amid the criticism, the US has offered $100 million in aid on the co