CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

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

The Human species is treatened by a true economic ,social, and ecological genocide

Agenda item 10: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Geneva, March 2004

Mr. Chairman:

The Cuban delegation thanks the reports submitted under this item by all Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts, as well as the report by the Open-ended Working Group in charge of studying the drafting of an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, whose recommendation of renewing its mandate for a new period of two years enjoys Cuba's full support.

The resolutions presented under this agenda item that defend the urgent need to protect economic, social and cultural rights interdependently and interrelated with civil and political rights, are a reflection of the concern to reverse the tragedy in which most of the world population barely live in.

It is clear that an illiterate, poor, jobless person without access to health care, food or drinking water, is unlikely in a real situation of understanding the world's complex problems, deciding individually and consciously participating in the political life of a society.

Alarming global figures overwhelmingly supports this argument:
Nearly 3 billion people currently live with less than two dollars a day.
8 million children die every year due to poverty; 150 million children under 5 suffer the ravages of malnutrition.

Foreign debt, which in 1985 accounted to 300 billion dollars, today reaches over 750 billion dollars.

This situation furthers a true economic, social and ecological genocide that threatens the human species.

Mr. Chairman:

The lives of millions of human beings that live on this planet are threatened by the aggressive plans of the hegemonic superpower whose designs of domination rest on hundreds of thousands of nuclear weapons, military satellites that spy on the globe’s every square kilometer, arsenals of chemical and biological weapons and military budgets around 400 billion dollars, with which many of the world's main problems could be tackled and resolved.
Mr. Chairman:

The lives of more than eleven million Cubans is also threatened by this imperial power as a result of one of the cruelest, most inhumane and prolonged policy that no people in the history of human civilization has ever been subjected to.

Declassified documents by the United States Government on the so-called “Operation Mongoose” (including document No. 36 dated 18 January 1962) stand as indisputable evidence of this assertion. This diabolical plan, devised long before most of the people in this room had been born, is conceptually defined in this document as, and I quote, “the operation is to bring about the revolt of the Cuban people (…) whose political actions will be assisted by economic warfare to induce failure of the Communist regime to supply Cuba's economic needs”, end quote.

Economic warfare, listen well! This plan, nevertheless, is only a thread within the huge cobweb of covert actions that have been hatched in the shadow of this open, genocidal and brutal economic warfare whose dramatic consequences for the Cuban people are not only translated into psychological and physical problems of their victims but also in around 72 billion dollars in damages which have not spared a single Cuban economic or social activity since the triumph of the Revolution; this is compounded with an extra 54 billion as a result of sabotages and other attacks and terrorist acts.

The economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the Government of the United States lacks all legal and ethical foundation and in conformity with item c) of Article II of the Geneva Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, of 9 December 1948, qualifies as genocide. At the 58th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, 179 Member States demanded the end to this policy.

Mr. Chairman:

Far from listening to the growing domestic public opinion and the overwhelming international outcry in favor of the lifting of this absurd policy, the current Bush Administration has brought its hostility towards Cuba to a phase of highest intensity, adopting new restrictions even in violation of the human rights of the American citizens themselves.

The attempts of the United States to bring the socio-economic project of justice and equality chosen by the Cuban people to failure, have not been successful, nor will they ever be.

In Cuba, infant mortality rate has been brought down to 6.3 per one thousand live births, life expectancy has been increased by 14 years, immunization against 13 diseases covers 99.5% of children, the unemployment rate has been reduced to 3%, and thus ensured full employment, social security coverage is 100% of the population and a revolution within the educational system at all levels have been carried out, including the intensive use of audiovisual aids and computers, the creation of an educational TV channel and many other programs, geared to achieving every citizen’s general comprehensive culture.

These, Mr. Chairman, are indeed tangible facts that belie the slanders and lies against Cuba. May history, then, judge our enemies.

Thank you very much.

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