Statement by Cuba on Libya

Source: Granma International, 2 March 2011.

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil.

• Statement by Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs to the UN Human Rights Council, Geneva, March 1, 2011.


Mr. President:

Humanity’s conscience is repulsed by the deaths of innocent people under any circumstances, anyplace. Cuba fully shares the worldwide concern for the loss of civilian lives in Libya and hopes that its people are able to reach a peaceful and sovereign solution to the civil war occurring there, with no foreign interference, and guarantee the integrity of that nation.

Most certainly the Libyan people oppose any foreign military intervention, which would delay an agreement even further and cause thousands of deaths, displacement and enormous injury to the population.

Cuba categorically rejects any attempt whatsoever to take advantage of the tragic situation created in order to occupy Libya and control its oil.

It is noteworthy that the voracity for oil, not peace or the protection of Libyan lives, is the motivation inciting the political forces, primarily conservative, which today, in the United States and some European countries, are calling for a NATO military intervention in Libyan territory. Nor does it appear that objectivity, accuracy or a commitment to the truth are prevailing in part of the press reports being used by media giants to fan the flames.

Given the magnitude of what is taking place in Libya and the Arab world, in the context of a global economic crisis, responsibility and a long-term vision should prevail on the part of governments in the developed countries. Although the goodwill of some could be exploited, it is clear that a military intervention would lead to a war with serious consequences for human lives, especially the millions of poor who comprise four fifths of humanity.

Despite the paucity of some facts and information, the reality is that the origins of the situation in North Africa and the Middle East are to be found within the crisis of the rapacious policy imposed by the United States and its NATO allies in the region. The price of food has tripled, water is scarce, the desert is growing, poverty is on the rise and with it, repugnant social inequality and exclusion in the distribution of the opulent wealth garnered from oil in the region.

The fundamental human right is the right to life, which is not worth living without human dignity.

The way in which the right to life is being violated should arouse concern. According to various sources, more than 111 million people have perished in armed conflicts during modern wars. It cannot be forgotten in this room that, if in World War I civilian deaths amounted to 5% of total casualties, in the subsequent wars of conquest after 1990, basically in Iraq, with more than one million, and Afghanistan with more than 70,000, the deaths of innocents stand at 90%. The proportion of children in these figures is horrific and unprecedented.

The concept of "collateral damage," an offense to human nature, has been accepted in the military doctrine of NATO and the very powerful nations.

In the last decade, humanitarian international law has been trampled, as is occurring on the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base, which usurps Cuban territory.

As a consequence of those wars, global refugee figures have increased by 34%, to more than 26 million people.

Military spending increased by 49% in the decade, to reach $1.5 trillion, more than half of that figure in the United States alone. The industrial-military complex continues producing wars.

Every year, 740,000 human beings die, not only on account of conflicts, but as victims of violent acts associated with organized crime.

In one European country, a woman dies every five days as a result of domestic violence. In the countries of the South, half a million mothers die in childbirth every year.

Every day, 29,000 children die of hunger and preventable diseases. In the minutes that I have been speaking, no less than 120 children have died. Four million perish in their first month of life. In total, 11 million children die every year.

There are 100,000 deaths a day from causes related to malnutrition, adding up to 35 million a year.

In Hurricane Katrina alone, in the most developed country in the world, 1,836 people died, almost all of them African Americans with limited resources. In the last two years, 470,000 people died throughout the world as a result of natural disasters, 97% of them of low income.

In the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti alone, more than 250,000 people died, almost all of them resident in very poor homes. The same thing occurred with homes swept away by excessive rainfall in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo in Brazil.

If the developing countries had infant and maternal mortality rates like those of Cuba, 8.4 million children and 500,000 mothers would be saved annually. In the cholera epidemic in Haiti, Cuban doctors are treating almost half of the patients, with a mortality rate five times lower than those being treated by physicians from other countries. Cuban international medical cooperation has made it possible to save more than 4.4 million lives in dozens of countries in four continents.

Human dignity is a human right. Today, 1.4 billion people are living in extreme poverty. There are 1.2 billion hungry people, and a further two billion are suffering from malnutrition. There are 759 million illiterate adults.

Mr. President:

The Council has demonstrated its capacity for approaching human rights situations in the world, including those of an urgent nature which require attention and action on the part of the international community. The usefulness of the Universal Periodic Review, as a means of sustaining international cooperation, of evaluating the undertakings of all countries without distinction in this context has been confirmed.

The spirit which animated our actions during the review process of this body was to preserve, improve and strengthen this Council in its function of effectively promoting and protecting all human rights for everyone.

The results of this exercise express a recognition of the Council’s important achievements in its short existence. While it is true that the agreements reached are insufficient in the light of the demands of developing countries, the body has been preserved from those whose aim was to reform it to their convenience in order to satisfy hegemonic appetites and to resuscitate the past of confrontation, double standards, selectivity and imposition.

It is to be hoped from the debates of the last few days that this Human Rights Council will continue constructing and advancing its development as an institution toward the full exercise of its mandate.

It would be very negative if, on the pretext of reviewing the Council’s institutional construction and in abuse of the dramatic juncture which is being discussed, it should be manipulated and pressured in an opportunist way in order to establish precedents and modify agreements.

If the essential human right is the right to life, will the Council be ready to suspend the membership of states that unleash a war?

Is the Council proposing to make some substantial contribution to eliminating the principal threat to the life of the human species which is the existence of enormous arsenals of nuclear weapons, an infinitesimal part of which, or the explosion of 100 warheads, would provoke a nuclear winter, according to irrefutable scientific evidence?

Will it establish a comprehensive protocol on the impact of climate change in the exercise of human rights and proclaim the right to a healthy atmosphere?

Will it suspend states which finance and supply military aid utilized by recipient states for mass, flagrant and systematic violations of human rights and for attacks on the civilian population, like those taking place in Palestine?

Will it apply that measure against powerful countries which are perpetrating extra-judicial executions in the territory of other states with the use of high technology, such as smart bombs and drone aircraft?

What will happen to states which accept secret illegal prisons in their territories, facilitate the transit of secret flights with kidnapped persons aboard, or participate in acts of torture?

Can the Council adopt a declaration on the right of peoples to peace?

Will it adopt an action program that includes concrete commitments guaranteeing the right to nutrition in a moment of food crisis, spiraling food prices and the utilization of grain crops to produce biofuels?

Mr. President:

Distinguished Ministers and Delegates:

What measures will this Council adopt against a member state which is committing acts that are causing grave suffering and seriously endangering physical or mental integrity, such as the blockade of Cuba, typified as genocide in Article 2, Paragraphs B and C, of the 1948 Geneva Convention?

Thank you very much.

US seeks to lure Cuban doctors to defect

BY CINDY JAQUITH, 07 February 2011.
Source: The Militant (US).


Washington’s effort to lure doctors away from Cuba to politically undermine the revolution there has received some recent coverage in the big-business press. The January 15 Wall Street Journal features a story on the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, run by the U.S. immigration agency, that offers refugee status in the United States to any Cuban doctor working for the Cuban government in a medical mission abroad.

Begun in 2006, the program is one of many—like the enticements offered athletes and artists—designed to win defections from the Cuban Revolution.

Under the parole program doctors and some other Cuban health-care personnel on assignments abroad are eligible to apply for asylum through any U.S. embassy in the world. If their application is accepted, a visa is granted. Permanent residence status is guaranteed once they are on U.S. soil.

The program is part of Washington’s bag of tools to promote a “democratic counterrevolution” in Cuba by tightening its embargo to maximize the economic hardships of the Cuban people and financing opposition political groups, in hopes of fostering hostility to the government. These operations especially target middle-class layers, who are more vulnerable to seeking individual solutions to the challenge of living in Cuba as the world capitalist economic crisis deepens.

As of Dec. 16, 2010, there were 1,574 Cuban doctors who gained U.S. visas through the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, according to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by the Journal. The paper acknowledged that “only a small percentage of Cuban doctors sent overseas have actually defected.” More than 37,000 Cuban health-care workers served in missions abroad in 77 countries in 2010 alone. Washington’s operation is aimed at weakening these missions, which have earned respect around the world.

The British capitalist daily the Independent noted, “They are heroes of the Haitian earthquake disaster … which President Barack Obama pledged a monumental United States humanitarian mission to alleviate… . Except these heroes are from the US’ arch-enemy, Cuba, whose doctors and nurses have put US efforts to shame.”

Author Nina Lakhani writes that there are 1,200 Cuban medical personnel in Haiti. They are deployed in 40 clinics across the island, and have treated 30,000 cholera patients since October. That’s 40 percent of all those struck by the disease. Not a single Haitian worker or peasant has had to pay anything for their treatment by Cuban doctors.

Cuban medical missions also shame U.S. “aid” programs in semicolonial countries by showing that disease, hunger, rodents, and other ills of capitalism are not inevitable. They can be ended. An example is the successful collaboration by the governments of Cuba and Equatorial Guinea to eradicate the rat population on the island of Annobón, something city planners in advanced capitalist countries have not achieved.

The Cuban infant mortality rate dropped to 4.5 per every 1,000 live births in 2010, the lowest in its history. In the United States the most recent figure available is for 2007. Overall infant mortality stood at 6.75, and for African Americans, 13.35.

UN Recognizes Cuba’s Efforts in Children’s Protection

Cuban News Agency (ACN).

The representative from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Doctor José Juan Ortiz, reaffirmed today that Cuba is a model in the putting into practice of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Ortiz told ACN that children’s rights are a political priority in Cuba. In spite of the US economic blockade imposed over the island for more than 50 years, all Cuban children go to school and receive health services for free. He compared Cuba with other countries, where many children do not go to school, and are victims of labor exploitation, among many other violations of their rights.

Ortiz praised Cuba’s achievements in decreasing its mortality rates. Last year, Cuba registered a mortality rate of 4.5 per 1000 live births, the lowest in its history, which locates it among the top nations with the lowest rates. He stated that, regardless of economic limitations, Cuba has a life expectancy of 78 years, given the social development guaranteed by the political will of the government and a system that prioritizes the state of rights.

The UNICEF representative mentioned Cuba’s achievements, with the highest development rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, up to the standards of first world countries.
Ortiz participated, along with national specialists and guests from Canada and Spain, at the 2nd International Workshop on Quality of Life in Pain, Pediatric Pain and its Rehabilitation, in session until January 21, in Havana.

He offered a lecture on the right to health assistance and the treatment of pain, not only physical but also psychoemotional, which is caused by the violation of rights generating emotional dissatisfaction and therefore, pain. He talked about social pain caused by injustice; imbalances within an unfair, economic, political and social order, which brings about serious violations of childhood rights.

Cuba registers record-low infant death rate

by RealCuba.wordpress.com, 4 January 2011.

Cuba ended the year 2010 with an infant mortality rate of 4.5 per 1,000 live births, the lowest in its history, the country’s health ministry said Monday in a statement.
Cuba had 127,710 births in 2010, 2,326 fewer than in 2009. The number of infant deaths was 45 fewer than in 2009, according to the ministry.

The province with the lowest infant death rate, 2.5 per 1,000, was Villa Clara in central Cuba. Another seven provinces also had death rates below 5 per 1,000.

Cuba’s infant mortality rate was the lowest in the Americas, said the statement.

Cuba spends more than 60 percent of its budget on free education and health care. Babies are scheduled to be examined by a doctor 12 times in a year and have a genetic test and immunization against 12 preventable diseases. Pregnant women receive an average of 17 medical treatments and 99.99 percent of them deliver in hospital.