Paris, 4 June 2025. The Cuban delegation participating in UNESCO’s Latin America and the Caribbean Week was received by Ms. Inga Nichanian, Director of the UNESCO Chairs Programme and the UNITWIN Network.
Also attending the meeting was Maria Rosa Cárdenas Tomazic, Specialist of UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme. The Cuban delegation, composed of Dr. Rodolfo Arencibia from the University of Havana, Dr. Tania Re from the University of Genoa, Italy, and the specialist Ysiniel Troche from Cuba’s local development project “Flora: Grandma’s Apothecary”, was accompanied by the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Cuba to UNESCO, María del Carmen Herrera Caseiro, and Third Secretary, Laura Alvarez Delgado.
The meeting was structured in three main parts. First, Dr. Rodolfo Arencibia presented the two-year work results of the UNESCO Chair at the University of Havana on “Medicinal Plants for Biodiversity Preservation through Sustainable Development”. In his remarks, he highlighted how the Chair is integrated into Cuba’s preventive medicine system, develops a rescue and safeguarding system for endangered plants, and also targets the private sector with a sustainable economy approach. During his presentation, Dr. Arencibia shared some of the Chair’s future plans, including becoming the driving force behind a network of similar UNESCO Chairs, a network of medicinal plant gardens, and the production of a documentary film showcasing the medicinal value of the tobacco plant, among other ideas.
In the second part, the representative of the Man and the Biosphere Programme present at the meeting expanded on the possibilities of linking the work of this Chair with that of Cuba’s biosphere reserves. She also addressed the relevance of initiating connections with the UNESCO “MangRes” project for mangrove restoration and the “Women for Bees” project.
In the third part, Ms. Inga Nichanian, Director of the UNESCO Chairs Programme and UNITWIN Network, commended the activism of this Cuban Chair. She also conveyed her gratitude to the national authorities for their longstanding support of this and other UNESCO Chairs. In addition to acting as a bridge with the natural sciences sector by inviting the MAB Programme specialist, Ms. Nichanian’s intervention served as a valuable update on operational guidelines for UNESCO Chair networks, priority areas of work, and the established pathways for strengthening inter-university cooperation worldwide.
The UNESCO Chairs and UNITWIN Networks Programme was created in 1992 to promote research and training in key areas of the Organization’s mandate, by establishing connections between universities worldwide.