Remarks by the Cuban Delegation

Cuba, in response to the steadfast outcry of the international community, assumes the duty to submit Draft Resolution L.94/Rev.1 entitled “Question of the detainees in the area of the United States naval base in Guantánamo”, to the decision of this Commission. It is co-sponsored by: Belarus, Syria, Libya, Venezuela and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.

None of the self-appointed “tutors” of human rights has dared to do it.

This initiative responds to the need to put an end to the impunity and conspiratorial silence in the face of one of the gravest chapters of massive and flagrant violations of human rights in recent history. It does not prejudge or condemn. It does not seek sanctions. It only demands the right to know objectively what is happening at the international torture center established within the territory illegally occupied by the naval base in Guantánamo.

With this action, Cuba acts consistently with the express will of the vast majority of citizens of the world, and with the decisions of their elected institutions in the most diverse regions, among them the European Parliament, which in October 2004 called on the United States Government to allow an impartial and independent investigation into allegations of torture and mistreatment of all persons deprived of their liberty in United States custody.

We repeatedly ask each and every one of the 25 members of the European Union and others who are always willing to submit and join actions against countries of the South to co-sponsor this draft. We are still waiting for their responses. Not even one of them dared to challenge the threat of the hegemonic superpower.

The European Union and those who add their fraudulent complicity to the aggressions which are wielded by the neo-fascist hawks of the Bush administration against Cuba and other peoples of the South, are now spreading the shameful and criminal mantle of impunity over the Washington regime, which seeks to institutionalize and promotes aberrant forms of torture; which keeps hundreds of people kidnapped to whom it denies even their identity and access to justice; which violates the most elemental norms of international law and international humanitarian law; which launches wars claiming to be combating terrorism while harbouring in its territory hundreds of anti-Cuban terrorists among them Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist of the Western Hemisphere.

The European Union’s position on this resolution is the expression of its subordination to the United States policy and of its incapacity to adopt an independent position when it comes to addressing any issue concerning the Empire.

The countries of the North will not support this draft resolution today—we know they have already yielded to them. They will leave their names registered in the pantheon of ignominy and will definitively push the Commission towards the abysm of discredit. The world demands justice and also demands that this Commission stop being an instrument of the interests of the powerful.

I am not going to call upon the European Union and other allies of the United States, yet again, to take off their masks because there is no way to hide their hypocrisy and cowardice. They have been left completely exposed.

Thank you very much.

Agenda Item 3

Geneva, 21 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

We repeatedly ask each and every one of the 25 members of the European Union and others who are always willing to submit and join actions against countries of the South to co-sponsor this proposal. We are still waiting for their responses. Not even one of them dared to challenge the threat of the hegemonic superpower. All of them were once again branded with the shame of their hypocrisy and were undressed in their chronic double standards.

The European Union and those who add their fraudulent complicity to the aggressions which are wielded by the neo-fascist hawks of the Bush administration against Cuba and other peoples of the South, are now spreading the shameful and criminal mantle of impunity over the Washington regime, which seeks to institutionalize and promote aberrant forms of torture; which keeps hundreds of people kidnapped to whom they deny even their identity and access to justice; which violates the most elemental norms of international law and international humanitarian law; which launches aggressions claiming to be combating terrorism while it harbours in its territory hundreds of anti-Cuban terrorists among them Luis Posada Carriles, the most dangerous terrorist of the Western Hemisphere.

The countries of the North which do not support this draft resolution today, will leave their names registered in the pantheon of ignominy and will definitively push the Commission towards the abysm of discredit. The world demands justice and also demands that this Commission stop being an instrument of the interests of the powerful.

Time has arrived for the masks to fall and hypocrisy to be undressed.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Jorge Ferrer, Member of the Cuban Delegation

Agenda item 19: Advisory services and technical cooperation in the field of human rights.

Geneva, April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

The item of advisory services and technical cooperation has been turned by industrialized countries into an extension of the politicized, selective and discriminatory Agenda Item 9 of this Commission.

The Report of the Secretary-General on advisory and technical assistance programs in the field of human rights points out that the main focus of the Technical cooperation Program consists of the recommendations of treaty bodies and special procedures.

Both bodies have made criticisms and recommendations to developed countries due to systematic violations of human rights of indigenous peoples and migrants, arbitrary detentions of asylum seekers; the practice of torture, trade in women and children for sexual exploitation purposes, child pornography and also due to denial of fundamental rights and freedoms, with the pretext of the alleged fight on terror.

However, a resolution on technical assistance has never been submitted or passed on one developed country at this Commission; and the High Commissioner for Human Rights has practically no offices in developed countries.

Mr. Chairman:

This Agenda Item is frequently used by developed countries as an instrument of pressure against underdeveloped countries. The latter are threatened with being subject to a resolution under Agenda item 9 which is indeed, the one that deals with so-called human rights situation exclusively, in South countries- if they do not accept the opening of an “in situ” Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or accept the approval of a resolution under this agenda item.

The same countries which, reluctantly, barely contribute one third of their commitments of official development aid, they allocate several million dollars every year to specific projects on technical cooperation on human rights.

Why? Because technical assistance programs have somewhat become instruments for the imposition of the Agenda of developed countries and of components of their political, legal and economic and domination.

How do developed countries promote their unilateral and selective interpretation of human rights?

Among other ways, through the so-called manuals, guidelines, basic principles, behavior codes and model laws intended to be imposed on underdeveloped countries through technical “cooperation” programs.

Most of these materials are not the result of the concerted will of the international community.

Many of these materials have been drafted by Special Rapporteurs and “experts”, most of them are nationals, residents or people educated in the so-called Western culture, who share the same ideology with the power centers of the transnational capital. Others have been drafted, many times by their own initiative, by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights where almost two-thirds of its staff comes from and is paid for by voluntary and financial contributions from only one political, ideological, economic and military group: that of industrialized countries of the West.

Mr. Chairman:

This is not the result of the imagination or supposition. The Foreign Minister of an Asian small country denounced during the High-Level Segment of this Commission how the Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and her Office in this country violated and exceeded, the mandate granted by the Commission itself.

The Independent Expert for Liberia also stated in paragraph 39 of her Report (document E/CN.4/2005/19) that most representatives of the government of that country expressed concerns because the United Nations Mission for Liberia (UNMIL) has established a “parallel” government which, contrary to the resolutions of this Commission and the General Assembly, hardly consults with local interlocutors. It has also established no criticism or any challenge of its views and/or perceived authority; and opponents are usually publicly derided as “criminals” and “crooks” by UNMIL leadership.

The afore-mentioned problems are not exceptions. Several of the reports submitted under this Agenda item are entitled Report of the Independent Expert on human rights situation in one or other country, which is not in line in several cases, with the letter of the mandate approved by consensus by this Commission and by the Economic and Social Council.

Several of the reports submitted under this Agenda item are not consistent with the principles of universality, indivisibility, interdependence, interrelation and equal significance of all human rights.

Many skip referring to economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development. Others make an inventory of the calamities in terms of human rights, but they do not make reference to their structural causes which are colonialism, and the slavery endured by these peoples for centuries. Neither do they refer to the unjust and unequal current international neoliberal order, which only benefits rich countries.

They all make recommendations on civil and political rights and call upon the national authorities in this field, but practically none of them makes a call upon developed countries which are the real responsible for underdevelopment and poverty, and the only ones that can change the international trade rules, finances and technological transfer, an indispensable condition to overcome the problems facing those countries.

Mr. Chairman:

Advisory services and technical cooperation programs face the serious challenge of succumbing to their virtual privatization and political manipulation or making come true the consensus principles of universality, indivisibility, interdependence, interrelation and equal consideration of all human rights and duly and effectively taking into account national and regional particularities and the diverse historic, cultural and religious heritages as well as the different legal systems.

Setting the objectives and expected results of programs of advisory services and technical cooperation and field activities on human rights are the exclusive and non-transferable competence of intergovernmental bodies and not of any other entity or instance inside or outside the Organization.

As the overwhelming majority of the international community has repeatedly reaffirmed that international cooperation in the promotion and support of human rights and in the solution of international humanitarian problems should be done observing the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international law, such as sovereignty and independence of States and non-interference in internal affairs. There cannot be cooperation –like some want—against or to the detriment of the basic pillars which this organization rests upon.
Mr. Chairman:

Cooperation cannot be forced upon, let alone be subordinated --as the Secretariat and developed countries want—to the realization of observations and recommendations –usually unrealistic, selective and politicized—by Special Rapporteurs and human rights treaty bodies.

The States' only legal obligations are the ones stemming from the international standards of human rights, to which these are parties, and not the arbitrary, unilateral and whimsical interpretations of experts, special rapporteurs or officials from the Secretariat.

Stop all attempts to impose –as falsely universal-- the values and legal structure of developed countries, disguising them as cooperation and advisory services.

Thank you very much.

STATEMENT BY MARIA DEL CARMEN HERRERA CASEIRO, MEMBER OF THE DELEGATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA

Agenda item 18: EFFECTIVE FUNCTIONING OF HUMAN RIGHTS MECHANISMS

Geneva, 13 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

The universality of human rights can only be recognized and applied through respect for the diversity of political, economic, philosophical and legal systems, and for the difference of existing historic, cultural and religious heritages. This diversity must be taken into account and present in each of the United Nations Bodies related to the promotion and protection of human rights.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has an irreplaceable role in the effective functioning of the whole system for the promotion and protection of human rights all over the world.

It is the job of the staff of this Office to draft the various reports that this Commission requests every year, to give support to the fulfillment of the mandates of its mechanisms and bodies, to provide technical cooperation and advisory services to the States that so request them and many other extremely important and delicate tasks.

Consequently, the States' concern on the geographical composition of the staff of that Office, their comprehensive training in all categories of human rights and their neutrality, integrity and independence –both individually and collectively-- is not a secondary concern.

For several years now, successive resolutions adopted by this Commission have requested the establishment of a geographic balance in the composition of the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. This imbalance, however, instead of being corrected, increases. The Group of Western European and other States not only continues to have more staff appointed than the rest of the world combined, but also the imbalance tends to grow. Such situation impedes the full understanding of the diversity of cultures, ideologies, civilizations, religions, legal, political and philosophical systems, something indispensable for the objective and impartial fulfillment of the responsibilities assigned to it.

Mr. Chairman:

In the system of special procedures of the Commission on Human Rights the imbalance in the geographical representation is also present, always to the detriment of developing countries. This is compounded with the political manipulation these mechanisms are subjected to by industrialized countries, and the lack of objectivity, selectivity and biased approaches which in many cases permeate its work.

In this context, attempts to mix the work and functions of several United Nations human rights mechanisms, especially the Treaty Bodies and the special procedures of the CHR spark concerns. Both are different mechanisms, with different mandates and particularities. On the other hand, the link between both institutions entails the risk of “contaminating” the work of Treaty Bodies with the political manipulation which affects the work of the special procedures of the Commission.

Another particularly worrisome problem is the imbalance in the appropriation of resources and the Office’s support for the various mechanisms of the Commission for the discharge of their mandates. It is unacceptable to favor procedures established under the field of civil and political rights and under Agenda item 9, to the detriment of the mandates created in the field of economic, social and cultural rights. Such situation harms the universality of all human rights.

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba attaches special significance to the effective work of Treaty Bodies. Although they have not been completely free of politization and selectivity, these Treaty Bodies have been-until very recently- the least affected mechanisms by these harmful practices.

However, treaty bodies have been facing problems, including the growing delays in the submission of reports by State Parties as well as delays in their review by Treaty Bodies. Therefore, a review is necessary in order to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness.

Cuba and other countries have proposed several alternatives aimed at trying to solve this situation, such as the harmonization of the periodicity for the submission of reports of all treaties every 4 or 5 years; the practice of submitting delayed reports in one consolidated report, and that a deadline for submission of the next report is set as from the date of the review of the previous report, among others.

On the other hand, although the letter of most of international instruments on human rights refer to the question of equitable geographic representation of members of treaty bodies, the prevailing over-representation of only one regional group- the Group of Western European and other States- in the membership of most of those bodies is one of the most worrisome problems.

In 2001, the Commission on Human Rights adopted resolution 2001/76; ECOSOC, decision 2002/275; and the General Assembly, resolution 56/146. These recommended that State Parties establish flexible systems of quotas by geographic regions, equivalent to the ratio of State Parties by region, so that they could periodically and automatically readjust themselves, based on increased ratifications. However, three years after, there has been no progress on this matter.

Since there is no system of quotas for the equitable geographical distribution of the membership, the election of human rights treaty bodies are especially difficult for candidates of developing countries, which should compete in an unfavorable situation.

Just to mention one example, in 2004, the elections to the Committee for the elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) were held. As a result, an injustice was committed: of the 7 female candidates submitted by African State Parties, no one was elected, while of the 7 female candidates of the Group of Western European and other States, 5 were elected. This caused underdeveloped countries to be underrepresented at the Committee.

Mr. Chairman:

Without full understanding of the diversity of cultures, ideologies, civilizations, religions, legal, political and philosophical systems, it is impossible for the various mechanisms, treaty bodies, and even, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights itself to be able to objectively and impartially comply with the responsibilities assigned to them by the international community. Gender and geographic composition is a precondition for the respect for plurality and it is an indispensable to render the universality of all human rights effective.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Alternate Representative of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 17: Promotion and Protection of Human Rights

Geneva, April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

The issue at hand allows the debate and adoption of a significant number of the initiatives that the Commission adopts every year. However, it would not be honest to say that its treatment allowed the fulfillment of the objective for which it was included in the program: the need to promote and protect human rights through a genuine and transparent international cooperation that respects the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations and promotes a respectful dialogue.

Why to deceive ourselves? The principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity are, for a sizable part of the countries from the industrialized North, just simple and phony slogans of a rhetoric produced to meet the requirements of their domestic policies and embellish their schemes for international domination.

With the workings of the hegemonic superpower –that does not care for the credibility of this Commission, let alone its ability as a parliamentarian forum for the promotion of just and truly universal consensus-- we are witnesses to the irremediable destruction of the Commission on Human Rights as a scenario of cooperation and dialogue.

Agenda item 9 ensures the continuation of manoeuvers motivated out of spurious interests of geopolitical domination. These allow the imperialist superpower and the so-called allies subordinated to it to turn this body into a sort of Inquisition tribunal that ensures the “preemptive conviction” of those who later –also preemptively—will receive the fear of their bombs; bombs which eventually have not proved to be so intelligent or effective enough to defeat the resistance of the peoples under attack.

New proposals for reforms emerge today in order to ensure control of this Commission by the superpower. Unable to secure leadership in our work— as from its weak ethical credential and the rejection generated by its aggressive imperial behavior – Washington is now pushing for a new format for this Body, which is required by its “Project for the New American Century”.
When a majority had claimed for the universalization of the membership of this Commission – based on the need to enlarge the participation of all States in its decision-making processes – now suggestions are made to just restrict its composition and the election of its future members by a two-thirds majority. With a smaller Commission, the number of governments upon which the U.S. authorities should exert pressure in order to impose its interests decreases. With one third of the votes – a figure that the superpower could easily reach only with the support of its Western allies and any other government which subordinates itself to it- Washington would secure a real veto power with respect to the candidates who aspire to join the Commission.

On the other hand, taking the Commission from the scope of activity of the Economic and Social Council, economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development would be definitely condemned to the most heinous ostracism. Developing peoples- the most affected by poverty, illiteracy and hunger- would be the main losers in the process. In addition to their misery, they would have to additionally endure threat of a military aggression or sanctions – then permanently extended- on behalf of the freedoms and democracy required by the “New American Century.”

Far from solving the essential cause of the discredit of this Commission – the imperial behavior of the United States and its closest allies- would become a chronic and structural phenomenon, with the removal of the few obstacles which today prevent the superpower from fully using this Body in its hegemonic domination project.

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba attaches the greatest importance to the issue of human rights defenders. No one deserves greater respect, support and protection than those who devote and risk their lives to create a better world, where social injustice, peace, democracy, the full realization of all human rights and development are realities of universal scope.

However, the manipulation of the imperialist superpower and their disinformation transnationals are not left out of this topic. They try to pin the disguise of “defenders” of human rights and democracy on the employees and mercenaries used to undermine the right to self-determination and destroy the constitutional order chosen by the peoples of the South, the responsible people and slayers in wars of conquest, bureaucrats and technocrats that waste millions of dollars to theorize, in complicity, on the "kindness" of the international unjust economic and political order in force, which has turned out to be so useful for the success of their plans of global domination.

Those who protest in the streets against the criminal consequences of the ongoing neoliberal globalization are labeled as “extremists”, those who resist foreign occupation are called “terrorists” or simply “enemies of democracy and freedom”.

The most dangerous and aggressive fundamentalism nowadays is that of the neofascist and military groups that have taken control of the United States Government. They have given themselves the messianic role to impose upon the world, with the force of the weapons –they could not wage the battle in the field of ideas—their political, economic and military dictatorship.

Mr. Chairman:

The International Charter of Human Rights sets forth the indissoluble link between human rights and human responsibilities. In its Article 29, the Universal Declaration establishes that everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

Unfounded fears in some, and particularly, the action of those who enjoy the power and wealth to impede the development of foundations of right to solidarity and friendliness necessary for the full realization of all human rights for all, hampered for years the debate, analysis and drafting of instruments or international standards that would pave the way to the progressive development of the approach of human responsibilities.

A milestone in this issue was marked with the drafting, presentation and ultimate consultation to governments, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental organizations of the Draft Declaration on human social responsibilities, as a result of the commendable effort made by the Cuban expert, Professor Miguel Alfonso Martínez.

Many have been the ghosts and fears fabricated by a handful of Western fundamentalists concerning this excellent draft.

They attempt to smuggle the false hypothesis that such draft would foster the subordination of the individual enjoyment of rights to a previous compliance with certain obligations. Nothing is farther from reality.

The text of the Draft Declaration in question, enshrines the perfect harmony, compatibility and complementariness between rights and human duties, which inspired the founders of the current international system of promotion and protection of human rights, in the years that followed the triumph over fascism. The draft establishes no conditions or pre-requirements whatsoever to the enjoyment of the rights of each human being, on the contrary, it encourages the respect for the conditions and indispensable values so that everybody can exercise it without discrimination.

Cuba encourages Professor Alfonso Martínez to continue to improve his draft, as from suggestions, contributions and even concerns, which he has been receiving from governments and other actors, and expresses its full support for such a significant endeavor.

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba will submit, under Agenda item 17, four draft resolutions aimed at vindicating the international order that proclaimed article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as indispensable so that all human rights can come true for all. These initiatives are:

- Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

- Promotion of peace as a vital requirement for the full enjoyment of all human rights by all.

- Human rights and international solidarity.
As their titles suggest, these drafts demand what has been kept to date as an unattainable dream. Notwithstanding, we are part of those who are convinced that humanity does not have a vocation for self-destruction and that, united, we will be able to overcome all obstacles, existing and those that may rise in the future. We are among those who are convinced and join the ranks of those who fight for a better and more humane world.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Claudia Pérez Alvarez, Member of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda Item 16 : Report of the Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights

Geneva, April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

First and foremost, allow me to congratulate Mr. Sori Sorabjee, Chairman of the 56th. Session of the Sub-Commission, for the detailed and substantial report submitted to us today on the results of the work of the Sub-commission during his mandate. On the other hand, it must be highlighted that document (E/CN.4/2005/2) contained in the report submitted by that Body this year- the only Body allowed by the Economic and Social Council to be preserved as a subordinate entity- includes many elements which make the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights indispensable for the work of our Commission.

Mr. Chairman:

Barely five years ago, during its 56th. Session in 2000, this Commission concluded the broadest assessment ever made to date with regard to the functioning of all and every one of the mechanisms available in it to exercise the functions assigned to it by the Council since its inception in 1946, including, of course, the Sub-Commission. After two years of hard work and complicated negotiations, that assessment-oriented exercise resulted in a very delicate consensus, based on a well-balanced assessment between opposing positions on, inter alia, the role that each of those mechanisms should play in the context of this Commission. Such consensus was included in decision 2000/109, adopted by this Commission on 26 April that year. The precariousness of this consensus was evident in the insistence by the Irish Chairwoman of the Commission, as she repeatedly underlined the need to “approve and broadly and fully implement” the agreement reached as regards each of our operational mechanisms.

It must be highlighted that on that occasion, the Sub-Commission was profoundly reviewed as regards both the content of its functions and the means and resources it had to carry them out. Indeed, it can be said that the Sub-Commission was “refounded” on that occasion, despite the fact that some of the most radical initiatives launched against it with the obvious purposes of eliminating it or leaving it practically with no significant functions- were rejected.

Suffice it to note that not only were its plenary sessions removed from the participation in the confidential procedure established under ECOSOC Resolution 1503, but also, the process (which had started some time ago) was concluded. Such process was aimed at taking it away from the ability to make decisions on human rights situations in specific countries. And, also, 25 % of the real time it had to carry out its annual tasks was cut off, thus reducing its annual session to 3 weeks (and not 4 as it was until then).

It must be recognized that the Sub-Commission not only accepted –with some of its members strongly refusing such measure- and immediately implemented that substantial reduction in its activities, but it has ever since been working with the highest effectiveness and productivity, which its already-diminished resources enable it to have. A proof of that is that this Commission- pursuant to its resolutions adopted on this issue as from that deep reform in 2000- has been forced to recognize the valuable contribution of the Sub-Commission to the work of the United Nations, in the field of human rights for over half a century, and the important role that the Sub-Commission and its thematic mechanisms have played in developing a better international understanding of this key issue.

Notwithstanding the above, a group of States – led by the United States and the European Union- year after year have continued their efforts to eliminate the 2000 consensus and to force through the Commission some ideas and views- which were overwhelmingly rejected on that occasion- on the Sub-Commission.

Those States –many of them also NATO member States and with an indelible colonial past- still do not forgive the Sub-Commission, inter alia, for its decision 1999/2 (which regarded the so-called “humanitarian intervention” a violation of international law, which served as an excuse to militarily attack Serbia-Montenegro). It does not forgive it either for its growing ability to perceive flagrant violations of human rights which take place in developed countries on a daily basis, or for the approval of the 1993 of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or its capacity to exercise its own initiative which- as regards the selection of issues for its possible Surveys- still allowed to it as a subsidiary body of the Commission.

In addition, those very States have continued to attempt to limit the sovereign capacity of all Member States to present to this Commission- as candidates to the Sub-Commission- those people that among their nationals are considered to be best qualified to join that Body; particularly, as those States limit the time that elected experts can remain as its members and other certain conditions in order to be elected as such by the Commission.

Mr. Chairman:

My Delegation today specifically expresses in this Room first its unflinching support to the continuation of the existence of the Sub-Commission as a subsidiary body of this Commission, with the mandate resulting from the consensus through its decision 2000/109; second: its total rejection of every attempt which explicitly or tacitly implies some limitation to the sovereign power of every Member State to designate as candidate any of its nationals, who- to their view (not to the view of some other States)- has the appropriate technical and ethical requirements cut out for that endeavour; third: its total rejection to establish limits to the time for an Expert (whether permanent or substitute) to remain as member of that Body, and fourth: its total rejection of selectively imposing- on the Sub-Commission- restrictions not set forth in decision 2000/109; particularly those restrictions sought to be based on the false comparison between entities which have several subordinate bodies, and are composed of ELECTED members, to others which do not have subordinate bodies and/or exist or have a mandate due to a DESIGNATION (and not to an election).

Thank you very much

Statement by Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios, Representative of the Republic of Cuba

Remarks for the interactive informal debate on the reform of the Commission on Human Rights

Geneva, 12 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

On 14 March 2005, at the opening of this 61st. Session of the Commission on Human Rights, we stated:

“The Commission on Human Rights is a sinking ship. It is shipwrecking due to the weight of its growing lack of credibility and prestige. It is sinking as a result of the political manipulation and double standards. It is sinking because of its inconsistencies and impunity enjoyed by a handful of privileged people, who benefit from the irrational world order in which we have had to live.”

We have actually been denouncing this state of things for almost 15 years. Today nobody questions that anymore.

As usually happens, in times of shipwreck, the alarm has been raised to save the sinking ship. The proposals on how to do it are nothing but simple and tricky bodywork, which sidestep the fundamental problem.

Let us reason together:

1. To create a Human Rights Council, of a more restricted composition, and members should be elected by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly. This moves us away from the real problem. This proposal seeks to exclude from this forum those of us who are at the forefront denouncing the hypocrisy and double standards of the powerful. The problem is not how many or who we are, but how we should act. What has to change is the attitude and behavior of the rich and developed world. They are the ones responsible for the current state of things. Our choice is universalization, not the excluding limitation which only benefits the powerful.

2. A global Report on human rights in the world. We should ask ourselves: What would it be used for? Would it end double standards and selectivity? What kind of parameters would it evaluate?

Could that be done by an Office where the vast majority of its officials belong to only one ideological and cultural group? We do have serious doubts about its value added.

Mr. Chairman:

Let us not be confused. It is not that the Commission on Human Rights is going wrong, it certainly is, but it is the world that is topsy- turvy. The CHR is the reflection of the unjust and unequal world in which we live.

What has to be changed is the world.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Jorge Ferrer Rodríguez, Member of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 14: Specific groups and individuals: human rights of migrants.

Geneva, 8 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

For 46 years, the aggressive measures and political manipulation of Cuban migration by U.S. governments have been a constant feature.

In that country, irregular migrants from other nationalities are discriminated and deprived by new federal and state laws of the human rights to education, health and employment; they are persecuted, detained, deported and even murdered in hundreds, by the border patrol or by anti-migrant racist gangs.

In contrast, any Cuban arriving at U.S. soil by whatever means, whether illegal or violent- is immediately given social benefits and automatic legal residence one year after his/her arrival, pursuant to the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.

This law has encouraged illegal, violent and unsafe migration, terrorist hijacking of tens of planes and vessels and the criminal and unpunished traffic of migrants and has caused the death of hundreds of Cubans.

The United States continues to apply, in violation of the 1994 bilateral migratory accords, the “dry foot” or “wet foot” policy in order not to repatriate to Cuba any of the illegal migrants who set foot on that country’s soil and many of those intercepted on the high seas.

Mr. Chairman:

As from last July, the current U.S. administration conducted a new unprecedented attack on the human rights of Cuban migrants and of the Cuban family in general, who have been unscrupulously turned into hostages to the insane aggressiveness against Cuba.

The sick obsession to asphyxiate the Cuban economy has no limits or scruples. In the anti-Cuban policy of Bush administration everything counts.

No community of legal migrants in the United States or in any other part of the world is subject to such severe restrictions and to such massive violations of their most elemental rights.
Among the Draconian measures, approved by President Bush and in fact since last July against Cubans residing in the United States and their families are:

• To limit the category of travelers and recipients of money remittances and of food and medicines packages.

• To reduce family visits to Cuba to once every three years from one travel a year, without any provision included for humanitarian travel in case of severe illness or death.

• To prohibit, upon return to the United States, entry of all product of Cuban origin, even when it is a family gift.

• To prohibit the sending to Cuba of basic and consumption items such as clothing and toiletries, among others.

Paralelly, the U.S. government also suspended indefinitely the rounds of bilateral migratory talks and arbitrarily reduced the number of visas to Cubans for temporary family visits to that country, in more than 80 percent compared to the year 2000.

Mr. Chairman:

The United States –the self-appointed champion of human rights- undermines, once again, the basic human rights enshrined both in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights itself, and in the two International Covenants and in a large number of General Assembly resolutions and in resolutions of this Commission.

What kind of State of law can the Government of the United States talk about when it applies travel bans contrary to its own Constitution and to a law passed in 2000, which codified all regulations on visits to Cuba and deprived the President from the capacity to modify such regulations?

What kind of democracy is that one by means of which the U.S. government approves of measures against the decisions of the Federal Congress which has passed successive bills, aimed at lifting travel restrictions to Cuba?
What kind of free flow of ideas can the government that severely limits direct contact and academic, educational, sports and cultural exchanges between people living in the U.S. and the Cuban people talk about?

The United States, once again, places itself at the margin of international law, of its own Constitution and legislation, of the majority feeling of the internal public opinion, of its own Congress and the international community.

The vast majority of the Cuban community of migrants in the United States, which is against the genocidal blockade and in favor of normalized relations with their families and with their Homeland, silenced for years by power, threats, and the terror of those who in Miami have attempted to impose a sole thinking, has said enough. That community has taken to Miami streets, in hundreds, to protest against this new charge. For the first time, genuine voices of honest people of Miami have been heard at this Commission claiming their rights- they are not those who come with a paid ticket and put themselves at the service of the Empire every year here.

With the indefinite suspension by the U.S. government of migratory talks, the reduction of travels of Cubans both ways and the tightening of the longest blockade in history, the hawks within the government of President Bush- with the complicity of the Miami-based terrorist mafia- are making a bid for artificially fabricating a migratory crisis and, with that, for facilitating the pretext for an eventual military aggression on the Island, a choice which has never been discarded by the current Administration.

The U.S. government and its parasite anti-Cuban mafia, composed of terrorists, corrupt and annexationist people, have not learned the lessons of history. They are mistaken once again.

Nothing or no one has impeded or will impede the irreversible recovery of the Cuban economy, the advancement of the new social programs of the Revolution, or the continuous, irreversible and permanent process of gradual normalization of relations between Cuba and its migration.

Thank you very much.

Statement delivered by Professor Miguel Alfonso Martínez, member of the Cuban Delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 15: Indigenous issues

Geneva, 11 April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

For several reasons, mi Delegation deems it convenient to review this year the worrying situation, which, in its view, is taking place in the context of the United Nations as regards the way in which the situation facing indigenous peoples in today’s world is being handled.

It must be recalled that as from 1977, this city Geneva, became the focal point of the efforts by indigenous peoples to make world public opinion bring greater awareness to the seriousness of their situation of isolation, alienation, discrimination and dispossession of their lands and wealth.

Many of us in this Room, remember how in the summer of that year, at this Palais des Nations, indigenous leaders and activists, basically, from the Americas, Northern Europe, from the Pacific Islands and from certain areas in South Asia gathered here to claim from the non-indigenous world a place from which to peacefully voice their protest- based on sound historic reasons- in the context of international relations.

The beauty, excitement and dramatism of that meeting were recorded in an extraordinary documentary film which from time to time is still being played on the city’s screens.

Unlike what had happened decades before, when the Society of Nations refused to pay attention to a similar indigenous initiative- based at that time on the famous criteria on self-determination of the peoples, which were contained in the so-called “President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points- the then President of the Unites States- the 1977 Geneva meeting had significant effects, as regards the presence of indigenous Nations in the world of multilateral diplomacy.

Five years later, in 1982, at the initiatives of this Commission’s Sub-commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, emerged the first UN Body exclusively devoted to dealing with the so-called Indigenous Issues. With the creation of its Working Group on Indigenous Populations, Geneva, which long before had become the headquarters of UN Agencies specialized in human rights, welcomed the ancestral vindications of the indigenous peoples in that humanitarian context.

Parallely, a strong network of solidarity and logistic support emerged and developed around the customary annual meeting which for thousands of indigenous participants meant the annual session of the Working Group.

After ten years of dedicated work and the participation of hundreds of people in the drafting of its content, the Working Group concluded drafting what can be considered the United Nations most important contribution to remedy the discriminatory and rapacious treatment endured by indigenous societies for over 5 centuries since their first encounters with non-indigenous cultures: The United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”.

This text was raised to this Commission in 1994 and since 1995 has remained under study by the Working Group then established to conclude its final drafting and send it to the General Assembly for its final adoption. It is precisely the current situation faced with this key document, what constitutes the essential bases of our current concerns.

The report submitted this year by Mr. Chávez, Chairman- Rapporteur of the working Group, (document E/CN.4/2005/89) brings nothing but frustration. The past 10 years have only served to harmonize the text of 2 substantive articles of the 45 articles contained in the Draft under study, and to verify the greater or lesser degree of disagreement existing on almost the entire preamble and on the remaining 43 articles of the Draft. Despite other attempts to sweeten such a poor balance, the facts are stubborn things, and it seems that the current stagnation could not be overcome in a foreseeable future; particularly, if we continue to work with the methods used so far.

Everything indicates that diverse factors affect the deplorable current state of affairs in this issue. In the first place, it seems obvious that the lack of political will of a handful of governmental delegations blocks to achieve formulas that allow for harmonized consensus in at least 2 key matters for indigenous peoples, namely, on the one hand, the practical, concrete and current content of the right to self-determination of indigenous peoples in pluralist societies, and the way to render that fundamental right effective, as well as, on the other hand, the way of giving solution to conflicts related to the possession of ancestral lands of those peoples, and the legal title which endorses the possession or ownership of such lands.

On the other hand, the system of “facilitators“ established for the joint study of a set of articles or paragraphs of the preamble obviously has not produced the results seemingly sought when introducing this negotiating modality. Finally, there is a wide impression that it would be useful to foster a change in the conduct of debates and in the methodology of the negotiation undertaken by the current Chairmanship which seems to have exhausted its potential of generating formulas able to reach harmonized accords among the negotiating sides.

Obviously, the Commission is today in a real crossroads. It has seen the conclusion of the first Decade of the Indigenous Peoples without being able to see the consideration of what is perhaps the most important objective of the Decade; that is, the approval and dissemination of the Draft Declaration by the General Assembly, and there is no indication today that what has not been achieved in 10 years can be achieved in a short, medium or term future in a world as the one in which we live.

Mr. Chairman:

Despite your founded pessimism as regards the possibilities of the current Working Group to get the approval of a text which accommodates several aspirations among the most significant ones of the indigenous peoples, the Cuban Delegation will not oppose an initiative tending to postpone for a short time (2 or 3 years) the current mandate of the Group. The delegation thinks however, that it would also be useful (maybe even necessary) to facilitate also a period of “cooling” of tensions that have emerged in the latest negotiations, and which allows likewise, an appropriate span of time (at least one year) to engage in exchanges of views among negotiators about the convenience to explore in the future new modalities in this negotiating process before starting the labor of the Working Group.

Mr. Chairman:

Another issue Cuba has been concerned about for some time now are the increasingly obvious attempts by some States to not only eliminate gradually the content of human rights from the indigenous question, but to maintain the UN agencies that deal with this question, (for example the Working Group on Indigenous Populations and the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues) constantly on the rack vis-a-vis the possibility to end their respective mandates in some of the “reviews” of functions which seem to be so much on fashion in times of “reforms” aimed at re-founding the United Nations and making our world organization a docile instrument of the foreign policy of those States.

One of these “reviews”, is the propaganda for the coming year by the ECOSOC with regard to the tasks of the Permanent Forum, a body in which –as is known- the appointment of indigenous experts composing it is the ultimate power exercised by a governmental representative.

Something that sparks the concerns of my Delegation is the fact that Geneva is being gradually deprived of the functions held by the European Headquarters of the United Nations (and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights attached to it) for almost a quarter of a century with regard to indigenous issues, for the benefit of New York, a city which does not have a network of logistic support which Geneva has had for more than 2 decades.

In addition to the setting up of the Permanent Forum at the New York headquarters, at the initiative of certain countries of the Western Group, the General Assembly has just appointed the Assistant Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs as Coordinator for the Second Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and with that, also, the performance and operation of the United Nations Voluntary Fund which should be soon created by the Secretary-General to finance the activities to be included- in due course- in the Program of Action of the recently -proclaimed Second Decade.

The afore-mentioned aspects, despite the fact that such responsibilities had been assigned to the High Commissioner for Human Rights-during the First Decade- whose Office, as far as my Delegation is concerned, did not make the least effort aimed at keeping such responsibilities in Geneva, where there are operational conditions in this field much better than the ones obviously seen in New York.

Consequently, the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) based in New York, should create a new infrastructure in order to carry out the daily work which will generate the component of human rights of that Program of Action, if that entity does not take into account and uses the human and organizational resources available at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, as well as the valuable expertise accrued in this field by the Indigenous and Minorities Unit of that Office.

Mr. Chairman:

I do not want to conclude my statement without mentioning the greatest concern of my Delegation. Indigenous issues were formally introduced at the United Nations in 1982 through decisions which the Sub-commission, the Commission and the Council clearly stated their readiness to contribute to ending the discrimination endured by indigenous peoples on a secular basis, to promoting and protecting their rights and freedoms, including their human rights, as well as to drafting the standards and international legal instruments that would be required to successfully crown the referred purposes.

That was the intention with which we addressed these issues almost a quarter of a century ago. Although we have advanced in certain aspects- particularly as regards the much higher degree of awareness achieved by the world public opinion and the international community as a whole on the problems of indigenous peoples- a few weeks ago, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous peoples, in the Executive Report on his latest report to the Commission (E/CN.4/2005/88) he expressed the following views, and I quote:

“Indigenous peoples are among the world’s most socially marginalized and dispossessed groups. They are generally the victims of various types of discrimination and denial of their basic rights. They have been dispossessed of their lands and resources, languages, culture and forms of government, and are often denied access to basic social services (including education, health and food, water, sanitation and housing) end of quote.

Likewise, it must be recalled that this Commission, in its resolution 2004/62 of 21 April 2004 expressed its concern- inter alia - over the persistence of serious violations of human rights of indigenous populations and reaffirmed the urgent need to recognize, promote and protect with greater efficiency their rights and freedoms.

If this is indeed the situation those peoples are generally still facing, the purpose of the UN action in this field should not and cannot limit itself only to studying the conceptual or generic elements of dispersed aspects of their everyday life, or to trying to integrate them within the development parameters which are practically rejected by the vast majority of those peoples as something alien to their national idiosyncrasies and to their vital needs.

Obviously, it would be something else than the above, that is, the imperative thing today is to clearly define the rights of those peoples, to appropriately recognize them in the national legislations, to foster their effective materialization and protect the free exercise of such rights by those peoples through mechanisms that ensure those peoples full and equal participation in the mechanisms of prevention and conflict resolution.

In other words: if we want this Second Decade- which has just started- to bring benefits expected from it, it would be always good to recall that New York resources would be of little use in this field without the humanistic philosophical approach and expertise which the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights can provide in this field from here, from Geneva!

Thank you very much.

Statement by Oscar León González, member of the Cuban Delegation

Agenda item 13: Rights of the child

Geneva, April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba recognizes the work made by several United Nations agencies and specialized mechanisms in favor of the defense of the rights of the child, and encourages them to continue with that work jointly with the national Governments.

We are aware, however, that the problems affecting the rights of the child will not have a definite solution if the roots of the causes which originate them are not dealt with. These causes are basically the result of the unjust international order in which we live, where the gap between the rich and the poor increases every day.

The difficulties that children are facing for the full enjoyment of their rights are not limited to the topics we are discussing today, at this Commission, under agenda item 13. On the contrary, these are just a small fraction of the pandemia affecting the vast majority of children in the world. Poverty, lack of food and of health care, among other evils, kill millions of children.

Suffice it to review some of the figures provided each year by institutions such as UNICEF: For example, over 1 billion children- over half of the entire population of children in developing countries- suffer from at least one form of severe deprivation.

About 400 million children- on average one in five in developing countries have no access to safe water. Over 16 % of children under five in the developing world are severely malnourished. Around 270 million children, or 14 % of all children in developing countries, have no access to health services. Over 640 million children of developing countries experience severe shelter deprivation. Over 140 million children in developing countries – 13 % of those aged between 7-18- have never attended school.

Mr. Chairman:

While the eradication of world poverty and development goals have not been achieved due to the drop in funds, increased military expenditure in the world amounts to the astronomic figure of 950 billion dollars. The United States of America represents today around half of that world’s military expenditure which means it spends almost as much as the rest of the world.

In order to achieve the goals in education, healthcare, water supply and sanitation, set forth as part of the Millennium Development Goals, developing countries- according to a UNICEF report- need additional external resources of approximately 50 billion dollars, that is 5,3 % of the above-mentioned world’s military expenditure. Likewise, the total additional cost to get all children of the world to receive basic quality education by 2015 is estimated between 9 billion and 15 billion dollars, that is, between 0,9-1,6 % of the world’s military expenditure.

The Commission on Human Rights cannot ignore those injustices; it has to steadfastly and radically tackle them if it really wants to protect the human rights of children. The huge resources humanity has cannot be used in the production of bombs, tanks, aircraft which kill innocent civilians, many children included.

Mr. Chairman:

In Cuba, the State protects the rights of children through the Constitution of the Republic by means of diverse Codes, Laws and Decree-Laws enshrined therein. This adds up to a large number of socio-economic programs intended to foster the development of children. Such efforts, however, have not been free from obstacles imposed mainly by the hostile and aggressive policy applied by the Government of the United States of America on Cuba for over 45 years. The long list of such obstacles also includes acts of terrorism.

Five Cuban youths remain unjustly imprisoned in U.S. jails for trying to avoid such aggressions. Their jailers have shown no mercy on them, going to the extreme of blocking their contact with their families, including little sons and daughters.

The U.S. Government applies an economic and financial blockade against the Cuban nation which has lasted for over four decades, whose effects largely impact the Cuban children who suffer its consequences for only having been born in Cuba. The regime of Mr. George W. Bush has tightened the blockade. His administration enacted new measures in May 2004, despite the almost unanimous claim of the international community for its lifting. One hundred- seventy nine countries gathered at the United Nations General Assembly in 2004, voted in favour of a resolution which asks for the lifting of the blockade. For the 13th consecutive time the international community made that claim in the context of that international forum.

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba will continue to denounce the injustices which prevent children of the world from enjoying their rights; and from its national experience and modest possibilities, Cuba will continue to contribute with the global work for the defence of those rights.

Thank you very much.

STATEMENT BY MARIA DEL CARMEN HERRERA CASEIRO, MEMBER OF THE DELEGATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA

Agenda item 12: Integration of the human rights of women and the gender perspective

Geneva, April 2005

Mr. Chairman:

This year, the international community is getting ready to conduct an evaluation process of the commitments made by the world leaders five years ago in the context of the so-called Millennium Summit.

The objectives and goals agreed upon on that occasion were not only an important recognition of the most pressing problems of the world, but also the materialization of a plan of action- which although modest and limited- could become a first significant step to try to revert the dramatic situation affecting millions of human beings on our planet.

Five years after the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, the situation cannot be more discouraging. Not only have there been no advances but also some obvious backwardness.

Women, particularly those living in a poor and underdeveloped world, have been and still are the most affected ones. In these countries, the harsh conditions imposed by poverty, hunger, diseases, illiteracy, armed conflicts, violence and discrimination are compounded with the huge burden of foreign debt, the impact of neoliberal-style structural adjustment programs and the negative repercussions of the globalization process. These factors jeopardize any national efforts by South States to overcome underdevelopment imposed on them, and carry their plans and programs forward for the benefit of women.

Women account for 70% of the nearly 2 billion poor people that there are in the world. Two thirds of the 876 million illiterates on our planet are women. More than half of the 40 million AIDS patients are women. It is indeed, a “feminization” of poverty which inevitably brings along with it the “feminization” of illiteracy, of diseases, of social exclusion, and of many other evils stemmed from the underdevelopment imposed on South countries.

This dramatic situation facing Third World peoples stands in contrast with the opulence of the countries of the North where, in spite of their obvious wealth and development, women's human rights are continually violated nonetheless; motivated not only due to the discrimination and lack of equality with respect to men but also due to alarming increase of violence against women, expressions of racism and xenophobia, and discrimination and exclusion of minorities, migrants and indigenous people whose main victims are women.

Mr. Chairman:
Cuba has proven that a different life in the interest of human beings is possible, and that in this framework the situation of women can be radically transformed and their rights fully realized.
In Cuba, women account for 45% of labor force. They represent 66.2% of all mid- and high-level technicians and professionals, 72% of labor force in the educational sector, 67% in health sector and 51% in Science and Technological Innovation. The maternal mortality rate has been brought down to 34.3 per 100 000 deliveries. The level of participation of women in leadership positions reaches 35.4%, placing Cuba among the top ten countries in the world with respect to women representation in Parliament, with 35.9% of female presence in the country’s highest legislative body.
The advances achieved by our country in terms of equality, advancement, participation and development of women are really commendable, especially if you take into consideration that such deeds have been achieved in the midst of a brutal economic warfare imposed by the U.S. government with the purpose of restoring its neocolonial rule over Cuba.

Firmness and proven political will of the Cuban people and of its government- which has spared no efforts or human and material resources to carry forward its social project for the benefit of the whole population- have been essential ingredients to achieve these results, and at the same time, are the main weapons to face the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade that the U.S. government has applied for more than forty years against Cuba, whose negative consequences have a greater impact on Cuban women and children.

Mr. Chairman:

Just a few days ago, this Commission heard testimonies from Olga Salanueva and Adriana Pérez, wives of René González and Gerardo Hernández, respectively, 2 of the five compatriots who are cruelly and unjustly imprisoned in U.S. jails. These women have come here on behalf of the families of the five, the mothers, wives and daughters who are suffering due to the arbitrary jailing of their beloved ones, and on whom the U.S. Government has shown no mercy, making it difficult- if not impossible- for the wives to visit her husbands in prison.

That is why, once again, Cuba has come to denounce in this Forum the situation these Cuban women are enduring.

Cuba, once again, has come to demand the end to the violation of the rights of these women and to the psychological violence inflicted on them.

Once again, Cuba urges the mechanisms of this Commission, in particular the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, to contribute, in the discharge of her mandate, to stopping these violations.

Once again, Cuba demands that justice be served.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Alternate Representative of the delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 11: Civil and Political Rights

Geneva, March 31st 2005

Mr. Chairman:

Today, a Program of global domination known as “Project for the New American Century” is being cynically and wildly promoted from Washington. Its ideologists and sponsors have been appointed to key positions in the Superpower’s foreign policy.

The truth is that a project of this nature is not new; neither does it set forth changes in the objectives and behavioral norms of the elite that exercises power in the United States. The history of the last century has been essentially one of the emergence, consolidation and hegemony of U.S. imperialism.

Few peoples, like the Cuban, have been so directly faced with the aggressiveness with which the hegemonic desires of domination by the history’s mightiest Empire are manifested. Cuba’s independence was thwarted, after a 30-year fight against the Spanish colonialism, by a U.S military intervention that finished the democratic and power institutions established by the Republic in Arms. A neo-colonial republic- conceived and made in Washington- was forced upon the Cuban nation accompanied with the “right” of the United States Government –several times exercised—to intervene militarily on the Island and to establish military bases, such as the sadly celebrated Guantánamo naval base.

Few Governments, like the United States’, have done so much against freedom and democracy stating their defense and promotion. The democratic ideals that inspired the Founding Fathers of the Thirteen Colonies, were kidnapped by the plutocratic elite that seized power after the beginning of the monopolist phase of its development. Such ideals have been manipulated as instruments of the expansion of their domination.

The characters of capital- the only real power in the United States- base their demagoguery and work of ideological proselytism on the alleged promotion of democratic values, with the real intention of precisely imposing the contrary- its tyranny and hegemonic domination, not only on the American people, but on the whole humanity.

A proclamation of independence that failed to end the slavery of African-Americans was followed by wars of expansion and extermination that winded up in the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the theft and annexation of more than half the territory of the brotherly people of Mexico. Shortly after came the turn for the conquest of Cuba and Puerto Rico- the latter, a Latin-American people still under U.S. domination.

Many other chapters of barbarity from the one-party regime imposed by the United States dominant oligarchy took place. All those who would question or would simply deviate from the lines of conduct decided by the establishment would not escape repression, penetration and neutralization by their intelligence services, or would simply be killed. Even elected presidents with renovated ideas would be victims themselves of assassinations, in events whose masterminds have never been cleared. Leaders from the people, true defenders of their most just demands, such as Martin Luther King, would not suffer a better fate.

McCarthyism will always remain proof of the shameful extremes to which this regime of power of the well-off minority can go; a nightmare which regrettably has been resurrected these days with the consolidation of a conservative and aggressive fundamentalism of the United States which seeks to openly impose its interests and strict political, social and religious patterns, and persecutes—as representation of “Evil”-- every person or idea that dissents from its dark dogmas.

The consequences of U.S. imperialism and its self-proclaimed messianic role to bring “freedom” and "democracy” to the world, have been even worse for the rest of the world. Successive interventions and military occupations in the Caribbean, genocidal wars of aggression—only in Viet Nam, such wars killed over 4 million people in which the so-called “Agent Orange”- was indiscriminately used, and which still kills a large number of human victims through the passage of years- the imposition and tutelage of bloody military dictatorships in Latin America, the conspiratorial commitment with the regime of Apartheid, the sponsorship and permanent support of the criminal policy of occupation of Palestine and other Arab territories by Israel, and a ruthless war for the geo-strategic control of Middle East, in particular, its oil, could be mentioned, just to mention some examples. These are only some of the chapters of the long and unfortunately unfinished history of aggressions and murders by one of history’s most powerful Empires with most embracing desires of hegemony.

Mr. Chairman:

The so-called U.S. democracy was conceived to ensure the exercise of political power by the capital. It is no surprise, then, that money is the mobilizing and determining factor of their shady and corrupt political dealings, which block the real participation of the people in the conduct of the fates of a country and which condemn the total marginalization of social sectors- such as African-Americans- denying them the possibility to influence the determination of results in the elections, which are increasingly questioned and discredited.

The scandalous electoral fraud in Florida in the 2000 Presidential Elections was followed by new and significant irregularities –better disguised and less noisy on this occasion- in the November 2004 presidential elections, especially visible in the decisive case of Ohio. Again, it was the Afro-Americans and poor people, the main victims whose voices were silenced by the power elite.

The superpower now tries to transfer their electoral mob-like political practices to the work of this Commission. First, they try to consolidate a lobby group at the service of their interests, which in the limits of the absurd, have labelled it with the over-blown title of “Community of Democracies”, which by the way, has nothing of a “community”- the only real actor is the United States- and much less of “democracy”- the superpower rules over and dictates every detail of its course of action.

The superpower tries to achieve several objectives with such initiative among which are to negatively single out those governments which pose an obstacle to its plans of hegemonic domination, and to secure a mechanism that keeps it from suffering another humiliating experience of the defeat of its candidature at the Commission on Human Rights. Such result kept it outside its membership during the whole year 2002. The alleged “champion” of democracy and free elections, seeks to escape the severe and just scrutiny allowed for by the elective processes to the United Nations bodies.

Is it possible to build a “Community of Democracies” under the aegis of the government which poses the main threat to freedom, peace, democracy, human rights and sustainable development in the world?

Nobody should be seized with naivety, or be driven by the tricks of the new swindle. With the process of the so-called “Community of Democracies”, the U.S. government seeks to once again manipulate cynically, hypocritically and opportunistically the democratic values, precisely to deny them in the work of this Commission, and with that, bury definitively the Body in the discredit generated by the impunity of the powerful.

If there are still some doubts about it, Cuba invites you to read the document distributed by the U.S. delegation with their viewpoints and suggestions to reform the Commission on Human Rights.

What does the superpower proposes?

Firstly, to eliminate the Third Committee of the United Nations General Assembly. It is chagrined by the existence of an entity of universal composition where the sovereign equality of States prevails when it comes to debating and making decisions on human rights. The Empire is scared of democratic participation. On the other hand, so many actors and voices threaten the interest in controlling and leading the work of the Body in line with the compliance with its objectives.

Secondly, to move the Commission away from the Economic and Social Council, and with that, to weaken the consideration of economic, social and cultural rights, whose own existence and recognition, it questions again.

The United States also proposes transferring the appointment of Chairman of the Commission to the United Nations Secretariat. Again, the false “champion” of free and periodic elections shows the allergy and stinging caused actually by the exercises of the democratic scrutiny. It is known that its hegemonic domination is based on the powerful “argument” of its “intelligent” weapons, not on reason and ideas.

It also suggests transferring to the United Nations Secretariat the power of determining the nomination of candidates to the Commission, by trying to export to our work, the questioned electoral practice of nominating candidates by the party leadership and power elite.

In order to handcuff the work of the special procedures of the Commission, the United States has a “wise” answer: to enhance the capacity of supervision of the Office of the High Commissioner on the performance of such procedures- an Office which indeed, is full of staff from one regional group only. The superpower is affected by the independence of several rapporteurs and experts of the Commission. How to admit the “lack of professionalism” of special procedures which dare request to be allowed to visit the international torture centers in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib?

Lastly, it recommends drafting of a Code of Conduct for the membership of the Commission. But, that Code has to be subject to the decisions of the Security Council – the Body which allows the superpower to exercise its veto power.

As the last straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of cynical opportunism and manipulation, they even get to state as follows- with regards to the referred Code of Conduct for the membership of the Commission: “We would have to be careful to avoid expansion of criteria to include those that we and allies such as Israel could not meet”.

In brief, the current U.S. administration does not need today a Commission on Human Rights based on the foundations and ideals that inspired the performance of Eleanor Roosevelt in the years that followed the defeat of fascism and militarism; it is working for the design of the Body which requires its “Project for the New American Century”.

Mr. Chairman:

The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 ended the neocolonial domination of our people and a bloody military dictatorship –imposed and supported by the United States—which violated even the most elemental formalities of democracy.

For the first time in its history, the Cuban people assumed power and became the leading character of its own destiny, establishing a genuinely participatory democracy, ruled by principles of equity, social justice and solidarity. This challenge in what they consider their “backyard” has never been accepted by the superpower which backs up its policy of hostility, blockade and aggressions against the Cuban nation resorting to the services of the annexationist and terrorist mafia of Cuban birth they harbor in Miami and of the few mercenaries they have managed to recruit within the Island.

These last 45 years for the Cuban people have been a constant and frontal period of facing U.S. aggressions, including mercenary invasions, a genocidal blockade and a true economic warfare, a large number of assassination plots against our leaders, support and impunity for those responsible for countless terrorist attacks against Cuba and the fabrication, direction and financing of a fifth column within the country in order to destroy the constitutional order that the Cuban people sovereignly chose.

Our people like any other people committed to the defense of the exercise of its right to self-determination has been forced to equip itself with legal instruments to punish the activities of mercenary elements that, financed by and at the service of a foreign power, work to force through a change in regime on the Island, which returns the Cuban nation to the conditions of neo-colonial domination imposed by the U.S. imperialism in the first half of the 20th century.

Within the law and with strict respect for the guarantees of due process, as has always done to date, Cuba will continue to resort to the enforcement of its laws in legitimate defense in face of the aggression of the U.S. which has not renounced the option of a military invasion to destroy the Revolution of the Cuban people.

Mr. Chairman:

The United States, that claims to be committed to the global fight against terrorism, guarantees impunity to terrorists acting against the Cuban people from Miami.

Five Cuban youths, five heroes of the global fight against terrorism are arbitrarily imprisoned in U.S. jails, for the only “crime”- if an honest person could so define it- of working to thwart the criminal actions carried out against the Cuban people by the South Florida-based terrorist mafia. They were not seeking the superpower’s national security-sensitive information; they were watching the activities and plans of the terrorist groups of Cuban origin which act against the Island from the United States. They were simply giving timely alert to Cuban authorities in order to avoid on time the criminal attacks against the life and properties of men, women, children and elderly in Cuba.

This Commission and several of its mechanisms have had the chance to hear once again the testimony directly from the some of the relatives of these five anti-terrorist fighters, whose names are Antonio, Fernando, Gerardo, Ramón and René. Adriana, Gerardo’s wife, and Olga, René’s wife, who travelled with her little daughter, Ivette, have been here. All of them have been prevented from visiting their husbands and father of the little girl. They have come here to denounce the judicial farce which sentenced these five political prisoners, and the unjust conditions they are enduring in prison.

They have come here with the support and solidarity of the whole Cuban people. They came with the conviction that justice and truth will sail through- if the walls of silence and information censorship imposed by the Empire’s authorities around this case- get to be broken.

The Cuban people, together with them, demand the release of these five heroic fighters against terrorism, and appreciate the support of all those honest people in the world who are side by side with us in this just vindication. We will continue to tirelessly fight for the return to the Homeland of these dignified and courageous Cubans.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Claudia Pérez Alvarez, Member of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 10: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Geneva, 29 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:
The Cuban delegation appreciates the reports submitted under this agenda item by all Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts. The aforementioned studies corroborate the negative impact of the current unfair international order, neoliberal globalization and their manifestations in the impairment and denial of the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights.
Without food and drinking water, without the freedom provided by the ability to read and write, without the guarantee of accessing a job and social security, without enjoying medical assistance and enduring the hardships of poverty, a human being cannot fully participate in the political life of a society and understand and act upon the complex problems which characterize today’s world.
The unjust economic order prevailing in the world fosters a silent and chronic economic, social and ecological genocide which jeopardizes the survival of millions of people.
Eleven million children under five years of age die every year-- a number of which could be saved with better nourishment-- and 600 000 poor women die at childbirth. The number of illiterate people in the world amounts to almost 1 billion.
In Latin America 20 million children endure cruel exploitation; they work on the streets instead of going to school. HIV/AIDS has put life expectancy in some African nations below 40 years and foreign debt of those countries- which in 1985 amounted to $300 billion dollars, today amounts to more than $750 billion. With the money allocated to the manufacture of a fighter plane, 3 million children could receive free education for life, in an underdeveloped country.
Mr. Chairman:
The lives and right to development of millions of human beings that live on the planet are threatened by plans of hegemonic domination of the only superpower, which increases its military superiority, threatens and attacks those who pose an obstacle to their imperial plans.
Seven in every 10 Cubans have grown up under the history’s longest genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade, whose direct damages exceed the figure of $79, 3 billion in addition to another $54 billion in losses as a result of sabotages and other terrorist acts carried out against the Cuban people, with the support or conspiratorial tolerance of U.S. authorities.

On 6 May 2004, President George W. Bush approved a broad plan to attempt to re-colonize Cuba. Such plan includes some 450 recommendations of new measures to overthrow the Cuban Revolution and install a U.S. totally-controlled puppet regime on the Island. All this is done despite the overwhelming rejection of the international community and of large sectors in the U.S. society, which ever strongly demand a change in the policy of hostility against the Cuban nation.

The new measures do not only further tighten the blockade on the Cuban people- as it further restricts its essential sources of income and the obstacles to its economic relations with third countries—but also they violate and constrain the rights and essential freedoms of U.S. citizens, such as freedom to travel and trade, and the academic, scientific, cultural and sports exchange with Cubans.

Several of these measures in question directly damage emotional relations, reunification and mutual support of the members of Cuban families.

Absurd as it may seem, the United States spends today much more money on implementing these measures against Cuba than on tracing Al-Qaeda’s finances. For instance, last year, U.S. senators and congressmen publicly condemned the fact that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury employed five times more agents to pursue and investigate violations of the Cuba blockade legislation than it did to trace the finances of the afore-mentioned organization.

Mr. Chairman:

The U.S. Government seeks to destroy-by any means- the political, economic and social system established by Cubans, so as to snatch the ownership of their housing units, factories and land, in order to secure their transnational companies the control over the Cuban economy and privatize education, health-care and social security, thus removing the current guarantees of universal access.

The truth is that no one in Cuba wants that opprobrious future. The attempts by the United States to annihilate the freedom, social justice and equality project chosen by the Cuban people have not been successful, nor will they ever be in front of the dignity and steadfast resistance of men, women and children in Cuba, convinced and determined to lay down their own lives in defense of their Revolution.

The Cuban people knows very well that its main guarantee of existence and development as a sovereign and independent nation, lies in its determination of unity, resistance and victory in face of whatever threat and aggression. However, all Cubans sincerely appreciate the support and solidarity given by the international community for our fight. Such support and solidarity, in addition to being a clear, ethical, moral and right-related encouragement- demonstrate that the fight we are waging today has universal significance and serves the common objective of achieving a better world- something possible and also indispensable for the survival of humanity.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Jorge Iván Mora Godoy, Ambassador, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda item 9 : Question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world

Geneva, 24 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

We have started this session knowing that the Commission on Human Rights is about to commit suicide, as a result of the actions taken by the main industrialized Western powers which subject its work to their spurious desires of domination and hegemony. In face of this crisis, some deep rectification would have been expected.

However, nothing has changed, and this issue will take the same course of confrontation as has been for the last few years. In fact, the United States, with the complicity of its closest allies, has confirmed its decision to impose a new anti-Cuban manoeuver on this Body.

A shameful selectivity, the very obvious political manipulation, and absolute lack of objectivity have marked for over one decade the treatment of anti-Cuban resolutions imposed by the U.S. Government every year on this Commission. This shameless practice is perhaps the most compelling example of the wrong and unfair path that this Commission has been dragged to in dealing with the so-called resolutions on countries.

The United States has taken this Commission hostage to justify its policy of aggression against Cuba. It seeks to justify the illegal and genocidal economic, commercial and financial blockade which for over 40 years it has imposed on the Cuban people, ignoring successive resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly by overwhelming support.

Everyone here knows that this practice has nothing to do with human rights. Everyone here also knows what Cuba has done for its people and for other peoples of the world. Lies are obvious and have been astonishingly disclosed. There is an irrefutable truth: in the history of the Cuban Revolution there has never been one single case of anyone being forcibly disappeared, tortured or extra-judicially executed. These are practices promoted and silenced by the United States in a large number of countries in Latin America as integral part of its imperialist project.

In the case of Cuba, we all know what this is all about. These days, strong pressures have already been openly exerted against the authorities of almost all members of this Commission- as happens every year- in their capital cities, in Washington, in the corridors of this Palais des Nations- when the date of voting on the text against Cuba is getting closer. Moreover frequent visits and threatening telephone calls are made by Empire’s agents in order to get support for their anti-Cuban juggling.

Mr. Chairman:

This Commission plunges in discredit every time an anti-Cuban resolution—always promoted by Washington- is imposed on this Body, regardless of the fact that this dirty job is assigned to someone else- and at the same time, this Commission remains blind, deaf and mute before the flagrant violations of rights and freedoms, committed by Bush administration and its closest allies against their own citizens and against those of several other countries.

Let us recall and stress that the United States affords itself to come to Geneva to accuse others, and at the same time to go around with an Attorney General who- in his capacity as legal adviser to President Bush- gave green light to the torture of detainees in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib and argued also against the validity of the Geneva Conventions if the President considered them inapplicable. And as if the above were not enough, the United States allows itself to have a sinister character as top promoter of democracy in the world; someone who was prosecuted for having lied to his country’s Congress and for having fostered a dirty war against Nicaragua.

It is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of demagoguery and double standards that this Commission has not been allowed to serve justice to over 100 000 Iraqi civilians dead, mostly elders, women and children, killed by the U.S. troops which still occupy the Iraqi territory. The war hawks- which rule in U.S. circles of power with President Bush- are allowed to hide the victims of their imperialist adventures, which are presented as necessary “side effects”.

Why is this Body forced to hide its head as an ostrich does and why is it not allowed to play its role to protect the victims from flagrant and massive violations of human rights?

How long will this Commission allow impunity of arbitrary detentions and torture and humiliation of U.S. authorities against prisoners in Abu Ghraib and the international torture center established at the illegal Naval Base in Guantánamo? Why are this Commission’s mechanisms not allowed to express their views and denounce the fact that five Cuban youths are still unjustly imprisoned as political prisoners in U.S. jails for the sole crime of having blocked the terrorist activities--which are organized and waged with all impunity in U.S. territory-- against their homeland?

We wonder if those self-appointed human rights champions will dare lead an initiative on these situations, or if they will continue to play their current role of being accomplice in the shipwreck of the Commission on Human Rights. How cynical! So much cynicism is needed to join a manoeuvre against Cuba and stay silent before the Dantesque and ruthless performance of the U.S. Government which- in its obsessive and insane war against an alleged Evil” nobody has yet defined- has become the number one public enemy of peace, freedom, and human rights of the vast majority of the world’s population!

We South countries- the discriminated ones- victims of these dirty political manoeuvres, and all the honest people in the world, demand urgent answers, which radically and permanently change the current state of affairs.

Mr. Chairman

It is about time we liberated this Commission from the burden that weighs us down. All of us should avoid its eventual collapse due to the political manipulation it has endured all these years. We have been placed on a historic crossroads: we either rescue the Commission, ending the practice of using agenda item 9 to promote mean interests—as happens today in the case of the anti-Cuban resolution – promoting genuine and effective multilateral cooperation formulas, or this Body will be receiving the coup de grace, and the Empire will have its way. Actually the U.S. current administration is the one most interested in preventing this Commission from consolidating its work based on the principles of universality, objectivity and non-selectivity, in order to evade truth and justice.

Cuba will not join those who serve as accomplices of the demise of this Commission. Those of us - many indeed- who are fighting for a better world where reason prevails over lie, and arguments defeat threats-- need to rescue this Body.

Mr. Chairman:

We have come before this forum to denounce the policy of hostility, blockade and aggressions of the superpower against the Cuban people, a policy which is increasingly more aggressive and dangerous, which seeks to destroy its Revolution. It is a Revolution that has allowed its people to enjoy full freedom and to guarantee lofty accomplishments in the enjoyment of its rights.

No honest person can overlook the news that almost everyday, corroborate the fact that the measures contained in the report of the so-called Commission “for Assistance to a Free Cuba”: are being rapidly applied. It is a 450-page large program, in which the U.S. Government- for the first time- incorporates, updates and enlarges in one single document all the plans and instruments of aggression that it has been developing and using for the last 46 years. Its stated purpose is to speed up the overthrow of the Cuban government, by any means, in order to take over the lands, housing units, industries, and natural resources of the country, to restore dependent capitalism and neo-colonial rule over the Cuban Nation. As some U.S. ideologists admit it, they are seeking to generate violence and promote social destabilization on the island.

In its so-called “Transition Plan” to re-colonize Cuba, the U.S. government resorts to the recent experiences of its wars of conquest, without forgetting that it once enjoyed the right to militarily intervene on the island, every time it deemed it convenient to its interests.

The international community is forced to prevent the current U.S. administration from continuing with its unjustified, disproportionate and ruthless wars. The world must say NO to war, to crime and to torture.

Some may wonder if Cuba is going to disappear, if the Cuban nation would be annihilated, if it would become a U.S. possession where that policy of annihilation and genocide would apply. Some may also wonder if Cuba’s example would be killed, if our elections will copy the money-driven sham that takes place every four years in the United States, if the dignity of the Cuban people and its rights will be trampled on.

We can reassure them that we will survive, that the Revolution is indestructible; that its example will last forever as a stronghold of the future generations; that its resistance and fight for the just causes will continue to be a reference in the fight of Humanity for a better World, and that our conviction before the aggressions and adversities and in the preservation of an increasingly fairer society is victory.

Thank you very much.

The Commission on Human Rights has to be re-founded from its own foundations

Statement delivered by Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios, Representative of the Republic of Cuba

Geneva, March 14, 2005

Mr. Chairman:

We are greatly pleased to see you leading the 61st session of the Commission on Human Rights. Your election reflects the recognition for your experience and for the prestige of Indonesia, which is an outstanding member of this body. This is also an auspicious opportunity to express our recognition to your predecessor, Ambassador Mike Smith, for his honest and dedicated Chairpersonship of the 60th session.

Mr. Chairman:

You are taking up a huge challenge. The Commission on Human Rights is a sinking boat. It is wrecked because of its growing lack of credibility and prestige. It is sinking as a result of the political manipulation and its double standards. Its sinking is marked by its inconsistencies and the impunity enjoyed by a few privileged, who benefit from the irrational world order in which we have had to live.

It is not us, the developing countries- poor and marginalized- the responsible for this state of things. We have always been the defendants in this forum, turned into an Inquisition tribunal for the rich. We have also been the voice of resistance, the muscle bearing all pressures when attempts have been made to unjustly accuse one of our brothers. We have likewise been the open rostrum to denounce the plans to put a wall of silence around the truths and to close the eyes to the sad realities of a world overwhelmed by the unlimited power of an arrogant superpower, which lacks ethical standards and a sense of humanity.

The alarm has been raised everywhere: we have to save the boat, we have to keep it afloat, and we have to make it sail again. Will this be this possible? Is it just a matter of patching up, of doing some body work and then keep sailing as usual? No, I do not think so. We need not only to rebuild our boat. We also need safer oceans to sail through. We call for another code of principles and values for the crew.

The Commission on Human Rights cannot be half-reformed. It has to be re-founded from its own foundations. In times of shipwreck, a large number of proposals have emerged; some of them are already among us. They all seem insufficient. A few dare open up old wounds. We need to address the root of the problem, which is very familiar to all of us.

The problems of this Commission are not, in essence, organizational or technical. It is not a matter of how many we are, but of how we behave. This Commission’s legitimacy is undermined by the membership of a superpower which tramples upon human rights and curtails liberties.

The problems of this Commission are fundamentally marked by political manipulation, the cynical use of its mechanisms by industrialized countries in their plans of domination, and the grossest selectivity. Our organizational deficiencies are an expression of that very manipulation and the tool with which they try to apply it.

A true reform should begin by eliminating the pernicious practice of imposing unjust resolutions against countries, always from a confrontational perspective, with a colonial vision and motivations of domination and political control. It should put an end to double standards, to the unlimited hypocrisy, to the impunity of the most powerful. It should reorient our work through dialogue and cooperation. It should devote more time to and allocate more resources to the effective realization of economic, social and cultural rights, and particularly the always postponed the right to development.

Cuba does not bring magic formulas to this Commission. Cuba is here, as usual, ready to work and cooperate in an effort that must be collective. Cuba is here to fight and promote the noblest causes to build a better world of equity and justice which makes wellbeing viable for all. Cuba has also come to defenestrate lies, to fight the impunity of the powerful, and to undress the hypocrisy of their acolytes.

Mr. Chairman:

These words might have irritated the ears of some distinguished delegates. Had it been the case I am sorry, but it is gospel truth.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Maria del Carmen Herrera Caseiro, Agenda item 4: Report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and follow-up to the World Conference on Human Rights
Geneva, 18 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

May I at the outset express our thanks for the report submitted by the High Commissioner under this agenda item.

We are very pleased that the recognition of the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelation of all human rights, is the basis of the activities of the Office of the High Commissioner, just as her report puts it. Likewise, we especially appreciate the decision of directing its work toward the elimination of obstacles for the full realization of all human rights. This, indeed, has to be the main priority of the Office of the High Commissioner, and also that of the Commission on Human Rights, a body established precisely to promote and protect such rights.

Unfortunately, the reality is quite different. The Commission on Human Rights- far from fulfilling its mandate- plunges ever more in discredit and politization, on the basis of the attitude and actions by some countries from the North that have turned this body into a biased court against the States of the South, taking it hostage of their mean political interests and hegemonic purposes.

The effective promotion and protection of all human rights calls for the abolition of this practice, and the establishment of genuine international cooperation. It also calls for the elimination of the narrow vision of considering as human rights, civil and political rights exclusively as it marginalizes and even ignores economic, social and cultural rights. It demands respect for the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations and the International Law, as well as the respect for the national particularities and the diverse historic, cultural and religious heritage.

The application of these tenets must be the starting point and the main purpose of any process of reform on human rights.

Mr. Chairman:

At present the issue of reform is very much on fashion, as from the recommendations contained in the report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. The most important merit of this document has been precisely the express recognition of the loss of credibility of the Commission on Human Rights. However, this process of reform must be much more profound and much more embracing, and extensive to all the human rights machinery, including the Office of the High Commissioner itself.

For several years now, through successive resolutions adopted by this Commission, the establishment of a geographic balance in the composition of the staff of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been requested; however, the imbalance- instead of being corrected- increases. How is it possible that there are talks about universalizing the membership of the Commission to make it more representative and democratic, while the Office of the High Commissioner—an aid and substantive support of all human rights machinery of the United Nations- is a “heritage” practically exclusive to the developed West? How is it possible that there are talks about drafting a global report on the human rights situation in all countries, while in the Office prevails the approaches of only one region in the world? Such situation hampers the full understanding of the diversity of cultures, civilizations, religions, legal, political and philosophical systems- an indispensable element for the objective and unbiased fulfilment of the responsibilities given to it.

Mr. Chairman:

The system of special procedures of the Commission on Human Rights does not escape the political manipulation that the Commission itself is subjected to by industrialized countries. The lack of objectivity, selectivity and biased approaches, in many cases, undermines its work. The imbalance in the geographic representation is also present in these mechanisms, always to the detriment of developing countries. Such situation must also be reformed.

In this context, the Cuban delegation watches with concern the attempts to mix the work and functions of the various United Nations human rights mechanisms, especially, those of the Treaty Bodies and the CHR special procedures. Both are mechanisms of a different nature with different mandates and particularities. On the other hand, the link between both institutions entails the risk of “polluting” the work of the Treaty Bodies with the political manipulation which undermines the work of the CHR special procedures.

Another problem which is particularly worrying is the imbalance in the allocation of resources and the support by the Office for the several mechanisms of the Commission for the performance of its mandates. It is unacceptable that privilege is given to the procedures established in the field of civil and political rights and under agenda item 9, to the detriment of those created in the field of economic, social and cultural rights. This situation goes against the universality of all human rights.

Mr. Chairman:

To continue mentioning the problems which today weigh down the UN human rights machinery, would make this statement too long. In essence, it is not about making cosmetic changes, it is necessary a true reform which turns it into a genuine instrument to foster the full realization of all human rights for everyone.

Thank you very much

Statement by Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, Agenda item 5: The right of the peoples to self-determination
Geneva, 18 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

The fundamental freedoms and basic rights of any individual are denied in the context of foreign occupation, and they are severely damaged, whenever something is done aimed at curtailing the fullest enjoyment of his people’s right to self-determination.
Without overlooking the dangers derived from the “peaceful” project of ideological domination based on the intention to impose on South countries a single political and economic model geared towards facilitating the control and global rule by the main centers of transnational capital, it must be pointed out that the exercise of self-determination of the peoples of the world, is faced today with challenges only comparable to those endured by Asia, Africa and Latin America, in the period where those peoples were under colonial yoke.
A hegemonic power today gives itself the unilateral right to attack militarily, without notice and as an alleged pre-emptive action, any country they wish or on which they are interested in pinning the label of threat to the world and their national interests, which today expand to the limits of the universe.
Humanity has witnessed the terrible consequences of the first experiences of the implementation of this imperialist doctrine. The Iraqi territory continues under military occupation by the army of the United States, which protects there the interests of the great U.S. oil corporations and others closely linked to the current Republican administration, torturing and murdering –to that end- thousand of innocent lives. Resorting to the most corrupted practices, U.S. authorities have secured real fortunes to their transnational corporations. The resources and cultural heritage of the Iraqi people have been squandered by the occupying power.
Mr. Chairman:
The Cuban people, that for more than 46 years have had to face the most various and serious actions from the United States against the enjoyment of its right to self-determination, including a mercenary invasion, the threat of a nuclear aggression, several hundreds of terrorist attacks, a large number of plots to assassinate its main leaders, the illegal occupation of a portion of its territory where the Guantánamo Naval Base still remains, and a genocidal blockade, is still being attacked by the Empire, which has not ruled out the option of a new direct military intervention in order to fulfill its historic desire of domination over the Cuban nation.
In this connection, I reaffirm here what our people have pledged so many times over in our squares, schools and factories: we will defend our right to self-determination --conquered after a long and bloody struggle of more than one-hundred years and paying the price of the lives of hundreds of thousand of the best children of the Cuban Homeland—to the last drop of our blood. Cuba will defend itself and will win in the battle –whether in the field of ideas or in the war of resilience in front of the aggressor – with the talent, dignity and courage of a cultivated people which supports its Revolution; exercises power, and is engaged in further deepening its independence, its freedom, its democracy, equity and social justice.
Mr. Chairman:
For having endured colonialism, foreign occupation and neocolonial domination, we feel like our own the cause of other peoples, to whom the enjoyment of the right to self-determination continues to be forbidden.
The people of Puerto Rico has the right to join the community of sovereign nations of Latin America. Cuba demands full respect for its self-determination and supports the efforts made by that brotherly people in its vindications for the right to determine its future.
Cuba demands also the immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from all occupied Arab territories, including Palestine and the Syrian Golan, as well as the fullest respect for the right of the Palestinian people to establish their own State.
Mr. Chairman:
Much progress has been achieved in the fight against mercenarism, due to its negative impact on the enjoyment of the right of the peoples to self-determination. In this regard, it is worth highlighting, the important contributions made by the distinguished personalities who have performed the mandate of special rapporteur of this issue.
However, the new challenges faced with in the prevention and sanction of mercenarism, poise high requirements to the progressive development of international norms on this matter. In the next few days, Cuba will distribute its traditional draft resolution, which will-on this occasion- incorporate innovative formulas and ideas with regard to the format of this Commission concerning this issue.
Mr. Chairman:
In August 2004, the Cuban government denounced the pardon granted by the former president of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, to four mercenaries and terrorists of Cuban birth who were prosecuted and sentenced by Panamanian courts, based on their responsibility in the execution of an assassination plot against the Cuban President, on the occasion of the 2000 Ibero-American Summit that, if carried out, would have also ended the lives of thousands of Panamanian university students and professors.
One of these pardoned persons, the notorious terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, has publicly recognized his responsibility in the destruction in mid-flight of a Cubana de Aviación plane in 1976, a criminal act which killed 73 people, as well as in the organization and execution of several bombings in hotels and tourist facilities in Cuba in 1997, which killed one Italian young man.
The reprieve granted to these four mercenaries and terrorists by the former Panamanian President is an infamous act, in violation of the national legislation of that country and of international instruments concerning the fight against terrorism.
After their reprieve, three of them were received and enjoy fullest impunity in the U.S. territory. The fourth one is hidden –of course not from the CIA or the FBI- somewhere in Central America. We do not discard the possibility that they are involved in new terrorist plans against the Cuban people, by resorting –as on previous occasions- to the use of mercenaries paid with the money from the Cuban-American terrorist mafia.
Mr. Chairman:
The Cuban people know the high price of the enjoyment of the right to self-determination. Our delegation will make everything necessary so that peaceful international cooperation in its protection, replaces the need to resorting to the sacred right to legitimate armed defense in face of those who try to curb it.
Thank you.

Statement Delivered by Jorge Ferrer Rodríguez, member of the Delegation of the Republic of Cuba, Agenda item 6: Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination. Geneva, 21 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba shares the concern of the Special Rapporteur over the increase in racist manifestations in sports, mainly in developed countries, and over the regression in the combat against racism, manifested in increasingly more open generalization of the intellectual legitimization of racism in the mass media and in the human sciences.
A worrying and dangerous wave of consolidation and accession to power of right-wing parties –based on xenophobic and anti-migrant ideas and programs-- is expanding, especially among developed countries, with the pretext of the fight against immigration, against terrorism or the protection of the national security.
Attempts are made to cynically justify the impunity of these phenomena under the cover of an alleged defense of freedom of opinion and of association.
There still exist –mainly in developed countries—the social exclusion and the marginalization of indigenous peoples, ethnic groups, minorities and other categories of social groups, the proliferation of discriminatory migration laws and policies and the adoption of anti-terrorist legislation that provide broad spaces to arbitrariness and the exercise of public authority on discriminatory, racist and xenophobic basis.
Mr. Chairman:
Science has shown that the concept of race is subjective and is based on prejudices. Genetic and other type of studies have shown that human species is a single indivisible race, and that there are no substantial differences as to the intelligence of the groups which are commonly called races.
However, neoliberal globalization is contributing to the expansion of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance throughout the world, making use of the advantages offered by new information technologies and tolerance of the authorities.
Another main problem of current globalization is that transnational circles of power based in developed countries have been promoting- on an arbitrary and fundamentalist manner- their values and political, cultural and juridical recipes and those of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Civilizations and religions such as Islam are especially being subjected to imperialist propaganda intended to discredit them and “demonize” them. Islam believers have consequently been targets of acts of discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, even of acts of vandalism.
Racism and discrimination are not exclusive of relations among different national, racial, language and ethnic groups within countries.
Environmental racism has extended to relations between industrialized and underdeveloped countries in the same way as is practiced with the minorities and poorer communities within industrialized countries.
Exportation of harmful chemical products and dangerous and contaminating technologies –mostly of which are prohibited in developed countries- to underdeveloped countries, as well as turning some of our countries into new weapons testing grounds, including weapons of mass destruction and toxic waste dumps are irrefutable evidence of this form of discrimination.
Mr. Chairman:
The exacerbation by the Government of President Bush of the “chosen people myth” in order to lead the destinies of the rest of the world and of the “American dream”, which depicts the United States as an allegedly superior nation and system of values and freedoms – entails a profound and dangerous political, racial and cultural fundamentalism.
Disrespect for cultural diversity and racist, discriminatory and xenophobic conceptions about the superiority of races, cultures and nations are among the essential causes of painful conflicts throughout history, particularly during the Second World War. It is a duty of the international community and of the true defenders of human rights to avoid the repetition of these painful acts. It is necessary to act now.
Universality does not exclude, but presupposes respect for the diversity of languages, cultures, ethnic groups, nations, religions and ways of thinking. Diversity enriches each culture and society, humanity and universality. All nations, without exception, are the result of the mixture of these diverse components.
Mr. Chairman:
The worst times of ku kux klan seem to have resurrected in the United States, with the recent murder of the mother and husband of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey, by white supremacists because of her ruling against the leader of the organization “Creativity”, which is based on the superiority of the angloxazon white race.
The U.S. indigenous peoples, which account for 2 million, have 8 times more possibilities of suffering from diseases, such as tuberculosis, than other citizens. Thirty-seven percent of them die before 45 years of age. The suicidal rate of indigenous people is three times the national average rate and infant mortality rate is 60 percent higher.
Angloxazon whites have 11 times more resources than Hispanics, and 14 times more resources than Afro-Americans.
There cannot be democracy, human rights, or real freedoms in the midst of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, inequalities and inequities within and among countries.

Thank you very much

Statement Delivered by María del Carmen Herrera Caseiro, Agenda item 7: The Right to Development, Geneva, 22 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

First and foremost, the Cuban delegation wishes to say thanks for the report submitted by the High Commissioner, as well as to express recognition for the activities conducted by the Office under this agenda item.

Mr. Chairman:

The right to development- as stated in the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development, and endorsed at the 1993 Vienna Declaration- is a universal and inalienable right.

We have recently witnessed the increase in certain trends which seek to redefine the scope and content of the right to development, as well as to question the definition of who is entitled to this right, and to limit the responsibility of its application only to the national level.

It is not by chance that the advocates of such trends are the main industrialized countries, which seek to fabricate an “argument” which enables them to avoid their historic responsibility, “justify” failure to comply with their commitments, and protect and perpetuate the unfair foundations for the current international economic order, postponing indefinitely the full realization of the right to development.

The right to development is a right of both individuals and peoples, and in order to achieve its full realization it is necessary to create an appropriate international environment.

Although it is true that at the national level there is still a lot to be done, one must bear in mind -- as has been repeatedly recognized in the framework of World Conferences and their follow-up processes- that underdeveloped countries have applied policies and programs aimed at development, but their national efforts are increasingly impacted negatively by a number of obstacles, international forces and influences that escape the control of their governments.

The negative impact of neoliberal globalization, which takes the autonomy from developing countries as regards decision making to draft development policies suitable to their realities; the huge protectionist barriers imposed by developed countries, unequal exchange in trade, decrease in and failure to comply with the commitment to Official Development Aid, and the unsustainable burden of the foreign debt as a factor of permanent decapitalization of the economies of South countries, are some of the main obstacles which hamper the realization of the right to development internationally.

Mr. Chairman:

The very experience of Cuba shows that, although sustained huge efforts, and the proven political will and commitment of its Government have led to undeniable advances in the realization of the right of its people and all its citizens to development, it is not possible to achieve full sustainable development, if the unfair patterns governing the international economic, financial and commercial order do not change.

In the case of Cuba, the negative consequences stemmed from that prevailing unfair international order are accompanied by the impact of the tightened and illegal economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States against our country for over 45 years. Such blockade is not only the main obstacle to the realization of the right to development, but it represents a massive and flagrant violation of all the human rights of the Cuban people.

Mr. Chairman:

This year, the international community is about to conduct an assessment of the application of the Millennium Declaration after 5 years of its adoption.

Five years ago, top world leaders expressed their decision to spare no efforts to make the right to development a reality for everyone, and create- at the national and international levels- an auspicious environment to development and to the elimination of poverty. Based on these tenets, they agreed on important and urgent objectives, whose process of implementation shall be revised this year.

Unfortunately, the commitments made continue to be “outstanding subjects” recognized on a piece of paper.

• Over 1.2 billion people, one in every 5, live under conditions of extreme poverty, and over 850 million suffer from chronic hunger.

• Eleven million children die every year; of them more than 5 million, due to causes directly related to nourishment.

• Approximately 121 million children, mostly girls, do not attend school and are denied their right to education.

• More than half a million mothers die every year due to complications related to pregnancy or childbirth.

• In 2003 alone, 2,9 million people died of AIDS; and 4,8 million were AIDS-infected. Over 2 million children under 15 years of age are AIDS-infected.

This bleak picture, regrettably, leads us to conclude- as many have already advanced- that the modest Millennium Development Goals will very unlikely be attained in the set deadlines.

This conclusion is really outrageous, if we bear in mind that the necessary potential exists to make the Millennium Goals a reality. Just to mention an example, military expenditure currently amounts to almost one billion dollars yearly. This figure accounts for almost 20 times the current level of development aid. This figure exceeds by far, the average annual cost of 40,000 to 70,000 million dollars needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

Mr. Chairman:

Cuba considers that these goals can still be attained. To that end, it is indispensable that industrialized countries renounce their selfishness and commit themselves to the cause of development, and to the elimination of the main obstacles to the realization of this right, for which they are the main responsible ones. In brief, Mr. Chairman, let them show a real political will to solve a pressing problem which cannot be further delayed.

Thank you very much.

Statement by Juan Antonio Fernández Palacios, Representative of the Republic of Cuba

Agenda Item 8 : Question of the violation of human rights in occupied Arab territories, including Palestine

Geneva, 23 March 2005

Mr. Chairman:

I consider it an inevitable duty, when this Commission begins the debate of agenda item 8, to devote our first remarks by paying posthumous honour to whom was a tireless, heroic and dedicated combatant all his life; the highest voice and the unyielding symbol of the cause of an entire people for the conquest of its legitimate right to the establishment of a fully independent State: President Yasser Arafat. His agony and death caused dismay, pain and sadness to millions of peoples all over the word, and very openly showed the cruelty and meanness of the oppressors of his Homeland and of those who support them from Washington.

The cause of the Palestinian people stands out among those which have aroused most solidarity and sympathies in the whole world. From the General Assembly to the Commission on Human Rights, the international community has been unequivocal in recognizing the inalienable national rights of the Palestinian people, the rejection of the illegal occupation of Arab territories by Israel, and in its condemnation to mass and flagrant violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed by the occupying power.

However, Israel and the United States ignore the will of the international community and block the United Nations actions. The United States has the shameful record, the figure of 29 vetoes to resolutions the Security Council has attempted to pass to stop the killing of an entire nation. Almost one quarter of these vetoes has taken place for the last 4 years under the current administration of President W. Bush.

The so-called “Palestinian question” has been the history of several wars, a protracted occupation and successive and also frustrated attempts to arrive at a solution to the conflict, in which the Palestinian people continues suffering a legacy of injustice, humiliation and frustration for not having attained its just claims and unflinching hopes of independence and self-determination.

Mr. Chairman:

The violation of human rights of the Palestinian people is the most flagrant, massive and systematic violation committed on the planet. The most recent report by Special Rapporteur, Mr. John Dugard, provides us once again with very detailed information on the Israel acts in the occupied territories. The extrajudicial executions, the practice of torture to detainees, arbitrary arrests, restrictions to the freedom of movement, the wrecking of homes and civilian facilities, indiscriminate use of force and collective punishment against the Palestinian population have become permanent accessories of the Israeli regime.

The figures of the dead and wounded are constantly growing. Since September 2000, after the outbreak of Intifada at least 3 850 Palestinians have been killed, including over 650 children. Over 36 500 Palestinians have been wounded. The majority of the dead and wounded are civilians.

The construction of the racist wall being build by the Israeli regime around the West Bank and Jerusalem, as well as the expansion and illegal increase in settlements are the most recent and deliberate attempt by Israel to plunder and annexate Palestinian lands, block any negotiation and render even more difficult and unbearable the life of an oppressed and humiliated people.

The Wall is responsible for most of the suffering of the Palestinian people. Its layout clearly indicates that the deliberate purpose is to incorporate the largest number of settlers to Israel, confiscating the most fertile agricultural lands and water resources, forcing the Palestinian residents into exile.

The International Court of Justice, in Advisory Opinion of 9 July 2004, stated that the Wall that Israel is building in the occupied Palestinian territory is contrary to International Law. The International Court stated that Israel has the obligation to stop its construction and bring it down immediately. This opinion was echoed by the United Nations General Assembly.

Israel has not complied with the Court’s Advisory Opinion, neither has it complied with the decision by the General Assembly, and on the contrary, it continues to build the Wall.

Cuba- which for over 45 years has endured a tightened and genocidal blockade by the United States- is firmly convinced that no wall, or fence, neither the most violent and most ruthless atrocities will be able to break the resilience and longing for freedom of the Palestinian people.

Thank you very much.

STATEMENT BY JORGE IVÁN MORA GODOY, AMBASSADOR, PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA.
Geneva, March 23 2005

Mr. Chairman:

The Cuban Government has cooperated and will continue to cooperate on a smoothly and permanent basis with all the thematic procedures that have stemmed from the Commission’s universal and non-discriminatory mandates.

Cuba will never accept the spurious mandate of the Personal Representative of the High Commissioner.

The submitted report on the so-called human rights situation in Cuba stems from a resolution imposed on the Commission on Human Rights as a result of the brutal pressure, conditions and blackmail exerted against several of its members by the United States, and it is based on the slanders and lies of the anti-Cuban campaign. It is totally immoral to introduce a report which is unable to refer to atrocities that occur in what is today an international torture center in the Cuban territory illegally occupied by the United States at the Guantánamo Naval Base. Such report only serves the ludicrous plan wielded as the basis to justify the anti-Cuban practice by the Government of the United States.

Cuba has drafted its report, several parts of which we have distributed today in this Hall, so that everybody get to know the true situation of human rights of the Cuban people and of the aggression, manipulation and hostility that we have endured for over 45 years by the biggest Superpower in History. With this report, Cuba puts forward its truth before this Commission.

I recommend that you read it.

Thank you very much.