CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Statement by Ambassador Rodolfo Benitez Verson, Deputy Permanent Representative of Cuba, at the General Assembly Thematic Debate on Global Governance. New York, 28 June 2011.

Mr. President,
The delegation of Cuba deems necessary to emphasize some aspects we consider to be key in the context of Global Governance:
1. Never before, the world was so unequal and inequalities so deep. Common challenges are serious and numerous. The current global order is unsustainable. The myth of a market able to correct its own financial flaws by itself vanished a long time ago. In order to survive, the human society will have to reorganize itself.

2. Therefore, Cuba supports the need for a Global Governance under the International Law and based on social justice, without hegemonies or double standards. We advocate a Global Governance having collective ethics as a principle on the basis of human solidarity and justice, conflicts resolutions through dialogue and cooperation, in which there is no room for the selfishness and dispossession leading to war and the use of force.

3. If we want a Global Governance benefitting us all, it is our duty to call for those with the historical responsibility to stop wasting and irrationally using the limited resources of our planet, and to allocate the millions of dollars used to wage wars to the promotion of peace and sustainable development of all peoples.

4. The most significant decisions cannot be taken within the framework of an exclusive club of countries, ruled by a secret meeting among the major powers.

5. The United Nations, including the General Assembly, has the central role to seek solutions to the main global problems, with the participation of all States on an equal footing. Such central role was clearly established by resolution A/RES/65/94 on Global Governance, adopted the General Assembly last December.

6. Global governance preserving the existing unjust, unequal and ineffective economic order, riddled with serious flaws, is unacceptable. The solution to the global economic crisis lies necessarily in the re-establishment of the international financial system. The deeply anti-democratic international financial institutions have not been able to solve, not will they solve, the main faults of the market. We call for the urgent creation of a new international economic and financial architecture. The new system shall recognize the particular conditions of developing countries and give them a special and differentiated treatment.

7. While the existence of the G-20 reflects the role of a significant group of countries in the global economy, it is also true that the complex and interrelated crises affecting us, particularly the current global economic crisis, require global solutions in which the 192 UN Member States are actually and effectively involved. All developing countries have the legitimate right to fully participate in the main institutions of global governance. Hence the key importance of strengthening the UN General Assembly, a forum where we all can participate in the search for common solutions, in a transparent manner and without exclusions.

8. Neoliberal globalization, the unjust and unsustainable economic order imposed on the world, and the global economic and financial crisis are key factors that have widened the gap between the North and the South. They have also caused hundreds of millions of people worldwide to be victims of hunger, poverty, unemployment, diseases, illiteracy, and other phenomena, the impact of which is more evident in developing countries. It is unjustifiable that the people living in the South are condemned since they are born to live less and in worse conditions than those living in the industrialized North.

9. For its part, Cuba will continue to face development challenges under the complex circumstances of today’s world, and to give the highest priority to social development, particularly education and healthcare, to the benefit of our people and other peoples of the world.

Thank you
(Cubaminrex-Embacuba ONU)