Madam Chair,
First of all, allow us to convey the satisfaction of our delegation to see you presiding over our work at the 71st session and to acknowledge the work that you and your team have developed under the chairmanship of the Fifth Committee. I reiterate the cooperation of the Cuban delegation to successfully undertake our work.
We further thank Mr. YukioTakasu, Under-Secretary-General for Management, for the presentation on the financial situation of the Organization, as well as Mr. Lionel Berridge and the Contributions Department for their continuing support to Member States on the matters that concern us at present.
We associate ourselves with the statement made by the distinguished delegation of Ecuador on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. In addition, we would like to raise some issues in our national capacity.
In making a comparative analysis of recent years, we see that the scope and complexity of the United Nations programs and operations have changed significantly. The Organization currently manages the largest number of deployed peacekeeping missions and personnel. Due to the current international circumstances, the greater number of people displaced from their homes depends on the United Nations more than at any other time since its founding.
Assisting all its Member States, reaching each of their nationals to provide them with a better life and rights, is more than ever an ambitious but praiseworthy goal. The agreements reached on sustainable development and climate change are encouraging. Although this is not all we could aspire to, we cannot fail to recognize that the current Agenda 2030 is the most ambitious that has ever existed.
All these promising international commitments and agreements must be realized and materialized. To this end, a weakened and under-resourced Organization cannot be devised to undertake the mandates entrusted to it by the Member States. The political commitment of Member States also implies a willingness to finance the functions and activities of the Organization. Consequently, Member States must pay their contributions on time, in full and without conditions.
It is worrying that the largest debts in the United Nations budget as a whole continue to be concentrated around the same Member State, which coincides with the one that benefits from the main distortion in the methodology for calculating the scale of assessments and is the largest beneficiary of United Nations procurement activities; in addition to the benefits of being the country where the Organization has its headquarters.
The accumulation of arrears has negative effects on the Organization's ability to fulfill its mandates and generates financial instability.
We reiterate the call for the Secretariat to make every effort to minimize the impact of financial pressures and ensure consistent and efficient management of the financial resources made available to it. We further consider that priority in the work of the Organization and the allocation of scarce resources should be directed to implementing the mandates agreed by Member States and not to administrative initiatives, which should be fully justified before implementation thereof.
Madam Chair,
It is well known that Cuba has repeatedly denounced, in the context of the Fifth Committee, the persistence of unilateral coercive measures. These are contrary to International Law and hamper the fulfillment of payment commitments to Cuba and to several other developing countries. These unilateral coercive measures further violate the UN agreements with the host country.
Despite the cooperation of the staff of the United Nations Secretariat to collaborate with my delegation, the implementation of payments to the Organization's budgets remain a challenge for Cuba due to the implementation of the regulations of the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade unilaterally imposed on my country by the United States for more than 50 years.
The blockade violates international law, the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and the rules of free trade. It is the most unjust, severe, prolonged and comprehensive unilateral system of sanctions ever applied against a country.
This set of measures and regulations also hampers and obstructs the materialization of Cuba's financial commitments to the international bodies, despite the full determination to honor them.
Cuba hopes that the new US administration will be receptive to the almost unanimous claims of the international community demanding the end of this criminal policy, and reiterates its willingness to engage in dialogue and cooperation on a basis of absolute respect for our sovereignty.
We reaffirm once again the commitment of the Cuban delegation to multilateralism, the strengthening of the United Nations system and its proper functioning.
Thank you very much.