Cuba

Mr. President: Mr. Secretary-General: Excellencies:

I bring to this Assembly the voice of the South, that of the "exploited and vilified," as Che Guevara was heard to say in this very Hall almost 60 years ago.

Diverse peoples with common problems. We have just confirmed this in Havana, which was honored to host the Summit of leaders and other high representatives of the Group of 77 and China, the most representative, broad and diverse grouping of nations that exists in the multilateral sphere.

For two days, practically without rest, more than 100 representatives of the 134 nations that make up the Group raised their voices to demand changes that can no longer be postponed in the unjust, irrational and abusive international economic order, which has deepened, year after year, the enormous inequalities between a minority of highly developed nations and a majority that cannot overcome the euphemism of "developing nations."

Worse still, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations acknowledged at the Havana Summit, the G-77 was founded six decades ago to remedy "centuries of injustice and neglect and in today's turbulent world they find themselves entangled in a tangle of global crises, where poverty is increasing and hunger is growing."

We were united by the need for change that has not been resolved and by our condition as the main victims of the current global multidimensional crisis; of abusive unequal exchange; of the scientific-technological gap; and of environmental degradation.

But we have also been united, for more than half a century, by the inescapable challenge and the determination to transform the current international order, which, besides being exclusionary and irrational, is unsustainable for the planet and unviable for the well-being of all.

The countries represented in the G77 and China, where 80 percent of the world's population lives, not only face the challenge of development, but also bear the responsibility of modifying the structures that marginalize us from global progress and turn many peoples of the South into laboratories for renewed forms of domination. A new and fairer global contract is urgently needed.

Mr. President:

With only 7 years left before the deadline set for fulfilling the hopeful 2030 Agenda, the outlook is discouraging. This august institution has already acknowledged it: at the current pace, none of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals will be achieved and more than half of the 169 agreed targets will not be met.

In the midst of the 21st century, it is an affront to the human condition that nearly 800 million people suffer from hunger on a planet that produces enough to feed everyone.

Or that in the era of knowledge and accelerated development of information and communication technologies, more than 760 million people, two-thirds of them women, cannot read or write.

The efforts of developing countries are not enough to implement the 2030 Agenda. They must be backed by concrete actions on market access, financing under fair and preferential conditions, technology transfer and North-South cooperation.

We are not asking for charity or begging for favors.

The G77 demands rights and will continue to demand a profound transformation of the current international financial architecture, because it is deeply unjust, anachronistic and dysfunctional. Because it was designed to profit from the reserves of the South, perpetuate a system of domination that increases underdevelopment, and reproduce a model of modern colonialism.

We need and demand financial institutions in which our countries have real decision-making capacity and access to financing.

A recapitalization of the Multilateral Development Banks is urgently needed to radically improve their lending conditions and meet the financial needs of the South.

The countries of this Group had to allocate 379 billion dollars from their reserves to defend their currencies in 2022, almost double the amount of new Special Drawing Rights allocated to them by the International Monetary Fund.

There is a need to rationalize, review and change the role of credit rating agencies. It is also imperative to establish criteria that go beyond Gross Domestic Product to define developing countries' access to financing on favorable terms and to adequate technical cooperation.

While the richest countries fail to meet their commitment to allocate at least 0.7% of their Gross National Product to Official Development Assistance, the nations of the South have to spend up to 14% of their income to pay interest associated with external debt.

Most G77 nations are compelled to allocate more resources to debt servicing than to investments in health or education. What sustainable development can be achieved with that noose around one's neck?

The Group today reiterates its call to public, multilateral and private creditors to refinance debt through credit guarantees, lower interest rates and longer maturity terms.

We insist on the implementation of a multilateral mechanism for renegotiating sovereign debt with the effective participation of the countries of the South, allowing for fair, balanced and development-oriented treatment.

It is imperative to redesign debt instruments once and for all and include trigger clauses to provide relief and restructuring as soon as a country is affected by natural disasters or macroeconomic shocks, problems so common in the most vulnerable nations.

Mr. President:

No sensible person disputes any longer that climate change threatens the survival of all, with irreversible effects.

Nor is it a secret that those who contribute least to the climate crisis are the ones who suffer most from its effects, particularly the Small Island Developing States. Meanwhile, the industrialized countries, voracious predators of resources and the environment, evade their greater responsibility and fail to meet their commitments under the Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

To cite just one example, it is deeply disappointing that the goal of mobilizing no less than 100 billion dollars a year until 2020 as climate financing was never fulfilled.

Ahead of the 28th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention (COP28), for the G77 countries the priorities will be the Global Stocktake exercise; the operationalization of the Loss and Damage Fund; the definition of the framework for the Adaptation Goal; and the establishment of the new climate financing target, in full adherence to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

The G-77 is convening a Summit of Leaders of the South, to be held on December 2 in the context of COP28, in Dubai. This initiative, unprecedented within the framework of a Conference of the Parties, will be a space to articulate our Group's positions at the highest level, in the context of the climate negotiations.

COP28 will show whether, beyond speeches, there is real political will on the part of developed nations to reach the urgent agreements required on this matter.

Mr. President:

For the G77, it is a priority task to change once and for all the paradigms of science, technology and innovation, which are limited to the environments and perspectives of the North, depriving the international scientific community of considerable intellectual capital.

The successful Havana Summit issued an urgent call to bring science, technology and innovation together around the inescapable goal of sustainable development.

There we decided to resume the work of the Consortium on Science, Technology and Innovation for the South (COSTIS), in order to promote joint research projects and foster productive chains that reduce dependence on Northern markets.

We also agreed to promote the convening, for 2025, of a High-Level Meeting of the UN General Assembly on Science, Technology and Innovation for Development.

The 17 cooperation projects that Cuba has put together within the framework of its Presidency of the G77 will help channel the potential of South-South and triangular cooperation.

We call on the wealthiest nations and international bodies to participate in these initiatives.

Cuba will not cease its efforts to boost the creative potential, influence and leadership of the G77. Our Group has much to contribute to the multilateralism, stability, justice and rationality that the world needs today.

Mr. President: Excellencies:

To all the problems and challenges that characterize the reality of our nations and mobilize our peoples, we must add the unilateral coercive measures, euphemistically called sanctions, which have become a practice of powerful states seeking to act as universal judges, in order to weaken and destroy economies and isolate and subjugate sovereign states.

Cuba is not the first sovereign state against which measures of this kind have been launched, but it is the one that has endured them the longest, despite the worldwide condemnation expressed almost unanimously every year in this Assembly, disrespected and ignored in its express will by the government of the world's largest economic, financial and military power.

We were not the first and we are not the last. Pressures to isolate and weaken economies and sovereign states today also affect Venezuela and Nicaragua, and before and since, they have been the prelude to invasions and the overthrow of inconvenient governments in the Middle East.

We reject the unilateral coercive measures imposed on countries such as Zimbabwe, Syria, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, among many others whose peoples suffer their negative impact.

We reiterate our solidarity with the cause of the Palestinian people.

We support the right to self-determination of the Sahrawi people.

Five years ago I spoke for the first time from this podium, where before me stood the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, and Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, to set forth these truths and the ideals of peace and justice of a small archipelago that has resisted and will continue to resist, living up to the dignity, courage and unbreakable firmness of its people and its history.

But I cannot pass through this world forum without denouncing, once again, that for 60 years Cuba has suffered a suffocating economic blockade, conceived to depress its income and standard of living, to endure continuous shortages of food, medicines and other basic supplies, and to curtail its potential for development.

That is the nature and those are the objectives of the policy of economic coercion and maximum pressure applied by the United States government against Cuba, in violation of International Law and the Charter of the United Nations.

There is not a single measure or action by Cuba to harm the United States, to damage its economic sector, its commercial activity, or its social fabric.

There is no act whatsoever by Cuba that threatens the independence of the United States, its national security, that infringes on its sovereign rights, interferes in its internal affairs, or affects the well-being of its people. The conduct of the United States is absolutely unilateral and unjustified.

The Cuban people resist and creatively overcome every day this ruthless economic war, which since 2019, in the midst of the pandemic, opportunistically escalated to an even more extreme, cruel and inhumane dimension. The damage is brutal.

With spite and surgical precision, in Washington and Florida they have calculated how to inflict the greatest possible harm on Cuban families.

The United States pursues and has tried to prevent the supply of fuel and lubricants to our country, an action that would seem unthinkable in peacetime.

In a globalized world it is not only absurd, but criminal, to prohibit access to technologies, including medical equipment, that have more than 10% of US components.

Its actions against the medical cooperation that Cuba provides in numerous nations are shameful. It even goes so far as to openly threaten sovereign governments for requesting that contribution and responding to the public health needs of their populations.

The United States deprives its own citizens of the right to travel to Cuba, defying its own Constitution.

The intensification of the blockade has an impact on the high migratory flows recorded in our country in recent years, which entails a painful cost for Cuban families and adverse demographic and economic consequences for the nation.

The United States government lies and does enormous harm to international efforts to combat terrorism when it accuses Cuba, without any basis whatsoever, of being a state sponsor of that scourge.

Shielded by that arbitrary and fraudulent accusation, they extort hundreds of banking and financial entities all over the world and force them to choose between continuing their relations with the United States or maintaining their ties with Cuba.

Our country suffers a real siege, an extraterritorial, cruel and silent economic war. It is accompanied by a powerful political machinery of destabilization, with millions of dollars in funds approved by the United States Congress, aimed at capitalizing on the shortages caused by the blockade and undermining the country's constitutional order and citizens' tranquility.

Despite the hostility of its government, we will continue building bridges with the people of the United States, as we do with all the peoples of the world.

We will increasingly strengthen ties with the Cuban emigrant community in every corner of the planet.

Mr. President:

The promotion and protection of human rights is a common ideal, which demands a genuine spirit of respect and constructive dialogue among States.

Unfortunately, 75 years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reality is very different. This issue has become a political weapon of powerful nations that seek to subject independent nations, fundamentally of the South, to their geopolitical designs.

No country is exempt from challenges, just as none has the authority to consider itself a paradigm in human rights matters and to stigmatize other models, cultures or sovereign States.

We defend dialogue and cooperation as effective avenues for the promotion and protection of human rights, without politicization or selectivity; without the application of double standards, conditions or pressures.

In that spirit, Cuba has put forward its candidacy for the Human Rights Council for the 2024-2026 period, in the elections to be held on October 10.

We thank in advance the countries that have already given us their valuable support.

If elected, Cuba's voice will continue to be raised with a universal vision, always from the South, in favor of the legitimate interests of developing countries, from a stance of constructive engagement and unwavering responsibility toward the full realization of all human rights for all.

Cuba will continue strengthening its democracy and its socialist model, which, even under siege, has shown how much a small developing country with scarce natural wealth can achieve.

We will continue our transformative effort, in the search for ways out of the siege imposed on us by US imperialism and for paths toward achieving the prosperity with social justice that our people deserve.

In that endeavor, we will never renounce the right to defend ourselves.

Mr. President: Distinguished Heads of Delegation and other representatives:

I conclude by extending an invitation to everyone to work to overcome our differences and face our common challenges together, with a sense of urgency.

To that end, the United Nations and this General Assembly, even with their limitations, are the most powerful instrument at our disposal.

Count always on Cuba to defend multilateralism and to promote together peace and sustainable development, for all.

It will always be an honor to fight for justice, sharing the difficulties and challenges with the "exploited and vilified" who are willing to change history. We are more. And we shall overcome.

Thank you very much.