CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

 

Statement by the Permanent Representative of Cuba in Geneva, Ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodríguez, in the general debate on Agenda Item 10 of the 16th session of the Human Rights Council. Geneva, 23 March 2011.

Actions aimed at imposing the treatment of the so-called Responsibility to Protect to the Human Rights Council are counterproductive and would only serve the interests of those supporting the confrontation, political manipulation and even military aggression.

The Human Rights Council, as all human rights machinery of the United Nations, is already working hard on the promotion and protection of all human rights for all.

There is no need for new concepts or questionable terms in its scope and purpose.  Deficiencies and obstacles are known: the lack of political will for a genuine dialogue and the claim of a few industrialized powers to impose its patterns of domination and political and ideological hegemony.

It is symptomatic that many Northern powers only resort to its false rhetoric of protection when it comes to citizens from countries rich in oil, gas and mineral resources, when these have a privileged geo-strategic situation in the military order or in the design of international flows of energy resources or when its authorities actively reject imperial opinions.

The so-called Responsibility to Protect has been manipulated as a doctrinal support of various military adventures of Northern powers, in which intervention forces are responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians described as “collateral damages”.  Nor are alien to us the practices of torture, extrajudicial executions, arbitrary detentions and rapes committed by the alleged “protection agents”.

Cuba will not accept that this Council be forced to act according to spurious purposes.  Some Northern powers are not interested in the life or well-being of millions of civilians in the South.  They work to protect the selfish interests of multinational financial groups that condemn the vast majority of civilians in the world to live in poverty, hunger, the acceleration of climate change, and the constant threat of war, even through the use of their nuclear weapons stockpiles.

Why the Northern powers do not act aggressively to protect the Palestinian civilians and instead, they cooperate closely and some even provide military assistance to the occupation authorities?

When the General Assembly agrees on the boundaries, content and framework programme of the concept of Responsibility to Protect, and assuming that the process in order to reach such an agreement develops under the legitimately respect for the aspirations and views of all States, Cuba will then be, without any doubt, among the first to defend its attention and application.

We will continue working for peace, social justice and development, in accordance with the many resolutions of this Council and the General Assembly, which establish a sound regulatory framework agreed for the promotion and protection of all human rights.

 

Sovereignty, territorial integrity and non-interference in the internal affairs of States, as well as self-determination of peoples are inalienable principles.  Cuba will continue to oppose the treatment of any matter which may prejudice or create conditions of threat to them.

Thank you very much

(Cubaminrex-Embacuba Ginebra)