CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
“THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS,
60 YEARS LATER”.

AN INDISPENSABLE CALL

Six decades have elapsed after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations underscored that freedom, justice and peace in the world are based on the recognition of dignity and the equal inalienable rights of all members of the human family. However, the world is in an emergency.

The predatory, exclusive, exploiting, racist and patriarchal logic of capitalism is incompatible with the assertion and reproduction of life in full and the meeting of human needs. The desires for hegemonic domination, wars of conquest to control natural resources, aggression on Nature and the persistence of a profoundly unjust international economic order have led the world to the brink of an irreversible catastrophe.

The irrational and unsustainable production and consumption patterns, currently deepened by the crisis, favor only a few at the cost of the poverty, hunger, illiteracy and despair of billions of people.

Militarization and the so-called global war on terrorism have led to the most flagrant violations of human rights, international law and international humanitarian law. Wars are a responsibility of States and are practiced both by their regular armies and mercenaries who engage in most of the illegal activities to avoid legal or social punishment. Thus, areas of legal emptiness are created, with no rights being recognized for the alleged suspects or guilt for the repressors, who enjoy total impunity.

Faced with this terrible reality, we, the intellectuals, artists, journalists, union leaders, parliamentarians, clergy and social fighters gathered in Havana in THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, SIXTY YEARS LATER International Workshop, reaffirm our commitment to the struggle to conquer and expand the rights for all men and women and to the strengthening of genuine international cooperation in the General Assembly of the United Nations, the Human Rights Council, and any other fora considered appropriate.

We further ratify the interdependence, indivisibility, universality, objectivity and non-selectivity of all human rights of the peoples and of individuals. We equally uphold civil, cultural, economic, political, social and sexual rights, the right to sovereignty, self-determination of the peoples, peace, justice, a healthy environment, democratic and fair international order and international solidarity.

We condemn the wars of aggression, the existence of weapons of mass destruction, military occupation of countries and territories and colonialism in the middle of the 21st Century; the exclusion and criminalization of indigenous peoples, practices of torture, forced disappearances, extra-judicial executions, incarceration and killing of social and political fighters, and other violations that have been committed and continue to be committed in several parts of the world, and reject all forms of impunity for their responsible parties.

We reaffirm the right of all men and women to have non-discriminatory access to health care, decent work, education, housing, safe food, the land, water and other essential goods.

We ratify the rights of Nature and the territories of the peoples in face of the charge by looting transnational companies and denounce the action of cover counter-insurgence agencies like USAID and NED.

We demand the audit and write-off of the illegitimate debts, which have already been paid back several times with the blood and sweat of the peoples and that those resources are allocated to pay the huge social and ecologic debt owed to the excluded majorities.

We demand that George W. Bush, his accomplices and everything they stand for be put on trial for crimes against humanity in the international and people’s courts.

We demand the immediate closure of the School of the Americas, the clandestine detention centers and the concentration and torture camp that the United States has established in the naval base in the Cuban territory of Guantánamo and the recognition of Cuban people’s sovereignty over that portion of their land.

Together with the demand of freedom for all social activists in jail by the mandate of the capital, we demand the immediate release of the five Cuban fighters against terrorism, who have already served more than a decade of unjust and cruel imprisonment in American jails as well as the three Puerto Rican prisoners for defending the independence of their country.

We vindicate our right to access and production of information, as well as a truly democratic news flow, which should be responsible and objective vis-à-vis the monopolistic control of the mass media industry. Access to the truth stands as an irrenunciable purpose.

On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, we join in recognizing the efforts and struggle of this people that is building a dignified life under permanent aggression and hostility. We demand the lifting of the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade of the United States government against Cuba. We express our admiration for the solidarity work of Cuban men and women towards millions of people from around the globe.

We ratify our solidarity with the peoples and governments embarked on processes of social change, for independence, self-determination and a more just life. We support the right of the people of Puerto Rico to their independence.

We will work jointly on the re-conceptualization of human rights as part of the right to all forms of life and we commit to develop a program of struggle that is not limited to the legacy of the UN Declaration but it should bring on board, as legal subjects, the communities, the indigenous peoples, African descendants, social movements and Nature itself. The struggle today for the human rights entails a comprehensive defense of life, the people’s history, territories, cosmovisions and culture, and their ways of doing and living. It entails overcoming capitalism.

We call upon all well-intended persons to defend together a world in which justice, humanism, peace, respect for dignity, solidarity and equality for all peoples and all human beings in harmony with Nature prevails.

Havana, 10 December 2008

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