UNESCO warns Cuba's fuel crisis endangers schools and learning
Fuel shortages forced Cuba to rewrite exams, shorten the school year and warned classrooms, meals and teacher transport were all at risk.
Cuba’s fuel crunch pushed school life into emergency mode, with UNESCO warning that every day without fuel threatened school meals, teacher transport and the electricity that keeps lessons running.
In February 2026, Anne Lemaistre, director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Havana, said the country was facing a complex situation driven by external restrictions that blocked fuel imports and were already hitting education. Cuban Deputy Education Minister Cira Piñeiro put the stakes bluntly: “For us, making society function starts with school; it is the first thing that must be restored.”
UNESCO’s response was not abstract. The agency called for sustainable energy in 5,000 schools, about half of Cuba’s total, along with support for nearly 80,000 affected teachers, resources for around 600,000 affected students and 25,000 youth-led community resilience projects. The warning reflected a system already stretched by shortages, outages and broken routines that reach far beyond the classroom door.
The Education Ministry later announced that the 2025-2026 school year would close gradually between June 15 and June 30 because of logistical problems tied to the crisis. In Matanzas, the Provincial Directorate of Education said the end of the year was being reorganized for more than 90,000 students in 504 educational facilities. Some final exams were replaced by practical assignments, integrative seminars or other alternative assessments, and admissions exams for the Vocational Pre-University Institute of Exact Sciences were canceled in favor of a municipal ranking system.
The wider energy emergency deepened after the United States issued an executive order on January 29, 2026 that further restricted the supply of oil or fuel from third countries to Cuba. OCHA reported that Cuban authorities had recorded no fuel imports since December 13, and that electricity shortages were lasting several hours a day in some areas. By May 2026, UN human rights experts said the fuel blockade amounted to “energy starvation” and warned that fuel scarcity was keeping children from attending school.
The school system entered the 2025-2026 year in September 2025 with more than 1.53 million students already facing severe economic strain. What began as a warning from UNESCO in Havana has now become a daily test of whether Cuba can keep classrooms open, teachers moving and students learning at all.
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