Madam President,
The Cuban delegation congratulates you on assuming the Presidency of this Conference. We wish you every success in your mandate and assure you of our full support.
In 2026, the Conference on Disarmament will operate in a global landscape that is increasingly dangerous and challenging.
Multilateralism, the UN Charter, and International Law are under direct attack. The United Nations disarmament machinery is weakening, and a new arms race is brewing in plain sight.
Military expenditures are growing rapidly, reaching a historic record of $2.7 trillion. In 2026, a single country—the United States—will spend the exorbitant amount of $901 billion on weapons.
Nuclear arsenals are being modernized and expanded, and an increasingly aggressive warmongering rhetoric is proliferating while arms control agreements are abandoned.
New technologies associated with artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, space assets, and quantum technology are increasingly being employed in the arms industry, generating new threats to international peace and security.
While spending on increasingly lethal weapons continues to grow, Official Development Assistance is rapidly declining.
More than 650 million people—8.2 per cent of the world’s population—suffer from hunger. More than 800 million live in extreme poverty. In the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, at least 739 million human beings cannot read or write, two thirds of whom are women.
It is irrational that nearly ten times more money is invested in devices for killing than in saving and improving lives on our planet.
Madam President,
The Government of the United States is driving the planet toward anarchy and warmongering chaos, posing a permanent threat to international stability and security.
That country is withdrawing from multilateral institutions and is promoting the law of the strongest instead. Its new National Security Strategy leaves no doubt about its hegemonic ambitions.
The brutal and unjustified military intervention in Venezuela, along with the kidnapping of its constitutional President, not only violates the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace but also shows a total disregard for International Law.
The United States openly threatens Cuba. On their side are overwhelming military power and the scale of its economy, along with a long history of aggression. On our side are reason and International Law.
No one dictates to Cuba what to do. We are not willing to give in to threats and blackmail, nor to renounce our right to determine our own destiny, in peace with the rest of the world.
Cuba does not threaten or attack anyone, but we know how to defend ourselves, and we will do so, to the very end.
Madam President,
The total elimination of nuclear weapons, in a transparent, verifiable, and irreversible manner, is and must continue to be the highest priority in the field of disarmament.
We advocate for the universality of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, the first international instrument to establish that such weapons are not only inhuman, immoral, and ethically indefensible, but also illegal.
Until the goal of nuclear disarmament is achieved, it is necessary to negotiate and adopt within the Conference on Disarmament, without further delay, a Treaty by which nuclear-weapon states provide unconditional and legally binding assurances that they will never use or threaten to use them against non-nuclear-weapon states.
The Conference must also negotiate, without delay, instruments on other priority issues, such as preventing an arms race in outer space and prohibiting new weapons of mass destruction.
In advancing along this path, Cuba’s active and constructive position can always be counted on.
Thank you.