New York, April 22, 2024.- The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Anayansi Rodríguez Camejo, addressed, this afternoon, the general debate of the Economic and Social Council Forum on Financing for Development that sessions this week at the United Nations under the general theme “Embarking on the path toward the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, FfD4”..
During her remarks, the Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs stated that the forum is being held in a challenging global context, of multidimensional crisis, strict financial conditions, slowdown in global trade, investment and productivity, growing levels of debt, unilateral trade restrictions and increasing inequality.
Rodíguez Camejo warned that there is hardly time left to meet the objectives of the 2030 Agenda, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change, and explained that the development progress achieved with so much effort “has been reversed, especially in poor countries, which have not yet fully recovered from the impact of the pandemic.”
The Cuban diplomat further explained that, according to current projections, almost 600 million people will continue to live in extreme poverty in 2030 and that, in this way, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a whole would remain out of reach even in 2050.
In this context, she added that the upcoming IV Conference on Financing for Development should aim, among other results, to set clear and concrete guidelines for a profound reform of the international financial architecture, both in terms of governance, representation, and access to financing, where a greater number of developing countries have a voice and vote.
Likewise, Rodríguez Camejo drew attention to the urgency of rejecting the application of unilateral coercive measures, incompatible with the International Law and the Charter of the United Nations, which prevent our countries from entering international markets on equal terms.
As an example of these measures, the deputy chancellor cited the case of Cuba, a nation that is suffering its effects after 62 years of intensified US blockade and, more recently, after its arbitrary inclusion in the spurious List of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations