forcing women to undergo clandestine and unsafe abortions. In March, the Constitutional Court ruled against a challenge seeking the 1978 Act to be declared unconstitutional and called on the national assembly to refrain from adopting any laws which would effectively ban abortions. In pharmacies, women and girls continued to be assessed against a questionnaire for which they had to reveal personal information about their sexual behaviour and reproductive health as a condition of accessing emergency contraceptives that were available without prescription, in violation of their right to privacy. Roma children and women continued to be disadvantaged in accessing health care, and one fifth of this group lacked access to it altogether. CUBA Republic of Cuba Head of state and government: Raúl Castro Ruz Arbitrary detentions, discriminatory dismissals from state jobs, and harassment in self-employment continued to be used to silence criticism. Advances in education were undermined by ongoing online and offline censorship. Cuba remained mostly closed to independent human rights monitors. BACKGROUND Lifting of travel restrictions on Cubans in 2013, removal of limits on receiving remittances, and the draw of visa-free countries continued to be important push factors for emigration. Cubans continued to leave in large numbers, despite the country’s changing international diplomacy, pushed by exceptionally low salaries and a tight web of control on freedom of expression. In June, the administration of US President Donald Trump made an almost complete reversal of the USA’s political rhetoric towards Cuba. This reduced the chance of US Congress passing legislation to lift the 140 economic embargo on Cuba, which continued to undermine economic, social and cultural rights. At least 12 lawyers from the human rights organization Cubalex received asylum in the USA after being harassed, intimidated and threatened with imprisonment for their peaceful human rights work. Cuba had not ratified the ICCPR or the ICESCR, both of which it signed in February 2008, nor the Rome Statute of the ICC. In December the government announced that President Raúl Castro would step down in April 2018. ARBITRARY ARRESTS AND DETENTIONS Human rights and political activists continued to be harassed, intimidated and arbitrarily detained in high numbers. The Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a Cuban NGO not officially recognized by the state, recorded 5,155 arbitrary detentions in 2017, compared to 9,940 in 2016. The Ladies in White, a group of female relatives of prisoners detained on politically motivated grounds, remained one of the primary targets of repression by the authorities. During detention, the women were often beaten by law enforcement officials and state security agents dressed as civilians. In January, Danilo Maldonado Machado, known as El Sexto, was released from a maximum security prison. He had been arrested in November 2016, hours after the announcement of Fidel Castro’s death, for having written Se fue (“He’s gone”) on a wall in the capital, Havana.1 In August, Yulier Perez, a graffiti artist known for painting dilapidated walls in Havana, was arbitrarily detained after months of intimidation and harassment from the authorities for freely expressing himself through his art.2 PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE The leader of the pro-democracy Christian Liberation Movement, Dr Eduardo Cardet Concepción, remained in prison having been Amnesty International Report 2017/18