New York, 29 January 2024.
Distinguished co-facilitators,
At the outset, we would like to thank you for the intensive work you have done in crafting this zero draft. For the Cuban delegation, this process entails maximum relevance. During our Chairmanship of the G77 and China, in 2023, we steered the Group and we provided inputs on the Chapeau and Chapters 1, 3 and 5, which represented valuable contributions from two thirds of the UN membership.
In our reading, this showed the high expectations developing countries have with the Summit of the Future. The international order, as it stands now, it´s unfair and does not represents accurately the reality of present day. The clearest examples are the International Financial Institutions, which operate following the structure of power of 40 years ago. It is also the case of the UN Security Council and the need to reform it comprehensively.
The reforms proposed in the Pact of the Future must aim essentially at providing a new and more equitable international economic order. Failing to do so will only push several developing nations into the abyss, which will unleash subsequently further crisis.
In the same way the UN stood for de-colonization decades ago, in the understanding that it was a moral imperative to burry an unjust system, today the UN has to stand for a major reform of the international financial architecture. In our opinion, if the Pact of the Future fails to achieve this purpose, so it will fail the Summit as a whole.
When it comes to the reform of other bodies of the United Nations system, we need to be clear on the specific purposes that are intended. In any case, it is out of question for the Cuban delegation to diminish or to dilute the intergovernmental nature of the United Nations, which is a core value that has preserved the Organization valid until today, even surviving to geopolitical tensions and crisis during almost eight decades.
The fact is that curtailing the intergovernmental character of the UN will further reduce the voice of developing countries in the multilateral system. Where are located the main private sector companies, the main think thanks, the largest and most resourced NGOs? It is overwhelmingly in the Global North.
Therefore, it generates no interest for us to consider in the document any sort of related idea that would only put us in a most disadvantageous condition. We understand that it has been the aspiration of the Secretary General to bring more balance and equity to the world. Then, let´s do nothing that could damage this noble purpose.
There are other issues Cuba identifies in the document that delegations had already rejected in 2023. In our opinion, there is no space, for example, for addressing in the Peace and Security Section some content that are completely unrelated to Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
This is just the beginning of a large process and we hope that sensitivity about the major problems in the world prevails in our next consultations. We will need to address in our deliberations the crisis that is happening in Gaza. We cannot discuss a Pact of the Future, while we are witnessing a genocide at present. The credibility of the UN is at stake.
Thank you.