New York, September 28, 2018. Universal and free access of all Cubans to education, culture and sports has been a fundamental goal of the Revolution, further proof of this are the 8 180 000 000 Cuban pesos allocated in the state budget, which guarantees an enrollment of 1,775,000 students in Preschool, Primary and Secondary Education and of 185,000, in Higher Education. This has also been recognized by the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), which has indicated that Cuba is the country in Latin America and the Caribbean with the highest rate of education development.
Despite these efforts, the US blockade against Cuba also has an impact on the educational sector. The main damages are determined, among others, by the payment of high freight rates for the transportation of items purchased in distant markets; the lack or shortage of some materials and equipment for teaching and research, due to their higher costs in other markets; limited access to scientific information and computer tools necessary for the production of educational multimedia and the obstacles to receive payments for professional services provided abroad.
Due to the prohibitions imposed by the blockade, Cuba cannot acquire the PERKINS mechanical Braille writers, since they are manufactured and marketed in the United States. Besides, several Cuban higher education centers, such as the University of Havana and the Technological University of Havana, have reported a significant decrease in the enrollment of students and / or specialists from the United States in workshops, postgraduate courses and events due to the limitations imposed by the US government.
On the other hand, in the Cuban sports sector, the possibility to import American branded sports equipment, many of them of mandatory use, as stipulated in the official regulations of the International Federations, has decreased, and the possibilities of purchasing medicines, muscle recovery and cutting edge equipment by Cuban athletic training schools are restricted, due to the limitations to import products and supplies from the United States.
We can illustrate these impacts with concrete examples such as the use of the Nexy credit line, granted to the National Institute for Sports, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER, Spanish acronym) for the purchase of sporting goods in Japanese companies, which has been remarkably limited, since the commercial distributor for these companies in this geographic area is located in the United States. Another example is that of the Anti-doping Laboratory of Cuba, one of the regional reference laboratories, which had to purchase the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, the main tool used to detect drugs in athletes, at a much higher price than if it would have been purchased in the United States.
Likewise, a peculiar example is the training of Paralympic athletes on the island, who do not have access to state-of-the-art equipment used in international competitions, due to their American origin, when they have demonstrated their sporting ability widely.
Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations