New York, 13 October 2016. Cuba considered today that the ills afflicting childhood cannot be overcome without a just and equitable international order, eradicating poverty and hunger, ending war conflicts, favoring human beings over capital and preserving the environment. Under Agenda item “Promotion and Protection of the Rights of the Child”, the delegate of Cuba to the Third Committee, Jorge Luis Cepero Aguilar, made sure that the existing international economic order, if sustained, will cause by the year 2030 extreme poverty to 167 de million children, some 69 million children under the age of five years will have died from curable diseases and 60 million at school age will remain deprived from education.
The Cuban delegate proudly described the privilege that Cuban children enjoy thanks to the success of the governmental action, jointly with the civil society, in preventing our children from becoming victims of the trafficking in persons, the smuggling of migrants and the selling of their organs, illegal adoptions or servitude. Thus, he pointed out that thanks to the political will and the efforts of the Cuban government, the promotion and protection of the rights of girls, boys and adolescents is an issue of top priority. The policies, actions and programs for children and adolescents began to be implemented after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, and as a result in today’s Cuba, hunger, illiteracy, insalubrity and discrimination against boys and girls are just bad memories.
Hence, he noted that despite the severe impact of the genocidal economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba for more than half a century, the Cuban people counts on an infant mortality rate of 4.3 per one thousand live births; a vaccination system at birth against 13 communicable diseases and the pride of being the first country to receive validation from the World Health Organization for eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS and syphilis.
After underscoring that Cuba holds, according to the World Bank, the best education system in the world and is the country that invests most in education with nearly 13% of its GDP, he concluded: “The worst form of violence against children is the denial of their right to life, to a safe world, to health, food, education, culture and healthy forms of recreation. Therefore, international cooperation and solidarity are critical to eradicate this and all forms of violence and to achieve the full realization of the rights of girls and boys. The General Assembly must continue to play a fundamental role in the United Nations to promote these rights.” (Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations)