CONTRIBUTION OF CUBAN, AND
INTERNATIONAL NGOs ESTABLISHED IN CUBA, FOR THE MILLENNIUM FORUM
Introduction
The new millennium
introduces humanity to important and unprecedented challenges, as well as
enormous opportunities. The end of the Cold War just a decade ago brought
with it a relative reduction of the risks of nuclear war or lesser
confrontations on a global scale. But its conclusion did not lead to peace, nor
did it strengthen security or accelerate disarmament – on the contrary, it
opened the way to unipolarism and great power hegemonism, it led to a new
confrontation between those who wish to impose an international order in the
interests of the military, economic and political supremacy of the United
States of America (USA) and of a small group of industrialized countries, on
the one hand, and the peoples of the majority of the countries of the
world, including large sectors of the population within the developed States
themselves, on the other.
Hegemonic forces created at the very center of universal power have made
intense efforts to homogenize the world through a neoliberal model that
increases the problems of humanity in favor of huge transnational corporations.
Keeping this reality in mind, the initiative of the United Nations to hold a
Summit for the Millennium and a Forum of the NGOs could be an important step in
the consensual search for ways and mechanisms to give an effective answer to
the adversities that confront the peoples of the world, and allow them to face
the challenges of the future.
1. PEACE, SECURITY AND DISARMAMENT
Peace appears as the very first item on the agenda both of the Millennium
Summit and of the Forum of NGOs. That is as it should be, because
achieving true peace is still a matter or priority in our times. Early in 1999,
30 wars and armed conflicts killed off lives, destroyed the economy and
affected ecology in different regions of the world. The internal causes of the
so-called "new" conflicts are still the same: ruthless exploitation
of man by man, extreme poverty, socioeconomic underdevelopment, an increasing
racial discrimination and rebirth of xenophobia, among others. And the external
causes of these conflicts are also still the same: the attempt by States with
imperial appetites to impose their will on others at any cost, the violation of
the regulations that guide international relations and the interference in the
internal matters of other countries.
In the past century, the well-known Mexican patriot Benito Juarez said that
"respect for the right of others is equivalent to peace," and those
words are still fully valid today.
The year 2000, proclaimed by the UN at UNESCO´s initiative as the
International Year for the Culture of Peace, must become an adequate framework
for the international community to analize and adopt measures to erradicate
those practices that represent violations of International Law, in particular
those referring to the inalienable attributes of the peoples and the States,
such as sovereignty, self-determination, independence and territorial
integrity, which, if affected, could endanger peace at local, regional and
universal levels.
It is frequently observed today how mechanisms are created or regulations for
international implementation adopted with openly interventionist characteristics,
imposed on the developing countries without their agreement and even against
their express will. There is a particular danger in the efforts carried out by
several powers to make other States believe that the concept of national
security is now less important. Attemps of this kind represent a menace to
peace and go against the interests of all the peoples of the world.
Recently we have also witnessed how the concept of human security has undergone
different interpretations – a principle of extraordinary value for all, but
whose contents and real range at the international level has yet to be defined
by the community of nations.
Just as the constitution of a country is the touchstone on which society is
organized, regulated and made to function, the regulations of International Law
are the basis for international relations and the work of the United Nations,
its bodies and the organizations that constitute its System.
The concepts of "humanitarian intervention," "prevention of
conflicts," "early alert," and "imposition of peace"
are not mentioned in the Charter and do not lead to a real solution for
conflicts, poverty, racial, religious and sexual discrimination, nor do they
favor the economic development of poor countries. On the contrary, they are
designed to impose the will of a small group of developed States and the
interests of a group of transnational corporations. None of the processes that
have been carried out either within, or outside the United Nations -- in
flagrant violation of its Charter, as in the recent case of the NATO aggression
against Yugoslavia – have brought peace and development to the peoples and
nations victim to these actions. Thousands of deaths, destruction of their
infrastructure, damage to their environment, and increasing interethnic
and interreligious rivalries have been the evident results.
The arms race has not ended. NATO´s expansion toward the East and US programs
to create an antimissile defense – in open violation of the ABM Treaty – have
put into doubt the future of negotiations on strategic arms control and
constitute a menace for the goal of achieving those reductions stipulated in
SALT II. The insistence of the United States in continuing the development of
its nuclear weapons has constituted an encouragement to multiply the number of
countries which are open or concealed owners of this kind of weapon. The
military doctrines of several powers have erased the engagement not to be the
first in the use of such a nuclear weapon.
Thus, while on the one hand there are efforts to limit the possession, transfer
and use of the conventional means of warfare available to poor countries
to defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity, on the other, the
big powers are developing and setting up outside of any control or multilateral
process of disarmament, the most dangerous weapon of massive destruction.
Nor has there been an end to the development of sophisticated and
"intelligent" conventional weapons aimed at massive destruction. In
its aggression against Yugoslavia alone, the United States of America tested
more than 20 new types of weapons, including the strategic B2A
"Spirit" bomber, bombs of the JDAM type, the GPS Navstar navigation
satellite to guide missiles toward their objective, and radionavigation
instruments used by the military to define exactly where they were
located.
The resources earmarked annually for the creation of new weapons are much
higher than those invested in development and assistance for poorer
countries, and in seeking a solution to the many serious
problems facing humanity.
The arms trade is constantly on the increase, and half of all arms exports is
carried out by the USA, which sells 50 % of the weapons going to the
foreign market. Competition between the US companies themselves constitutes a
factor that increases tension in different parts of the world.
The great powers denounce the proliferation of local conflicts and civil wars,
while using them hypocritically as a pretext for their policies. In fact,
some of them feed those conflicts by supplying them with
weapons and other war material, thus turning this activity into a very
lucrative business with enormous economic benefits.
2. THE ERADICATION OF POVERTY, INCLUDING
DEBT CANCELLATION AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The World Summit on Social Development, held in 1995, took into account
the erradication of poverty as an ethical, social, political and economic
imperative and adopted ten commitments, none of which has been fulfilled. As a
result of its decisions, many governments analyzed and adopted plans to fight
poverty.
The concern of the international community over this aspect of poverty is
totally justified, since it is evident that it is impossible to have a
sustainable world in which 60 % of the population lives in deplorable
conditions, without the basic elements for life, such as housing, drinking
water, health, education, employment and food. But in spite of this
well-founded concern, the absolute number of poor people is on the
increase, particularly in Third World countries, the result of the unjust
methods in the distribution of riches, the squandering of consumer societies,
and the inequity in the present-day international economic and political order.
In 1997, 30 % of all children under five in Third World countries were
undernourished and 38 % of all adult women were illiterate. In Africa, more
than 30 % of the population has a life expectancy under 40 years.
This demonstrates that the unjust world economic order acts in a permanent way
against the right to life, education, health, development and a dignified
existence. This injustice in the international economic order expresses itself
in all its crudity in the case of the unpayable foreign debt of the Third
World.
In 1998 the countries south of the Sahara paid more than 14 % of their income
from exports to service their foreign debt, and in Southern Asia they earmarked
22 % for the same purpose, while Latin America had to pay more than 30 billion
USD toward this end.
The debt has thus become a true calamity for our countries and according to
UNICEF, it is the direct cause of the death of 500 000 children a year in the
Third World. The total and unconditional annulment of the foreign debt is,
therefore, an imperative necessity to allow a large number of people to
achieve the economic conditions required to fulfill the objectives set out at
the Copenhaguen Summit.
The annulment of the debt, however, would not be enough. There would also be a
need for a new financial and monetary system which would include all the States
on an equal footing , and would represent the interests of rich, less
rich and poor countries. Otherwise, it will be impossible to mobilize
resources for development. This new system would also control financial speculation,
which is now at the 3 billion dollar mark, representing a permanent menace for
the stability of our national currencies.
It would also be necessary to create trade regulations that would truly benefit
everyone and not just those enjoying the advantages acquired as a result of the
historic pillage of others.
Such a multilateral trade system should be based on the true implementation of
those regulations approved by all, rather than on the imposition of the
law of the strongest or the extraterritorial application of the
laws adopted by the great economic powers. It should also be based on the
consideration of the particular conditions of the underdeveloped countries and
on the differentiated and preferential treatment of their problems, in order to
assist them in their development and integration in world markets and
economies.
Today more than ever the struggle against poverty requires the
implementation of the UN Resolution on the Right to Development, and that the
OECD member States fulfill their commitment, confirmed in Copenhaguen, to
contribute 0.7 % of their GNP to development, and put an end to the shameful
practice of slowly reducing it.
All this information clearly shows that those measures adopted on a national
level by the governments of the underdeveloped countries are not enough, and
that a common and intense struggle must be waged by all the peoples of
the world if they want to reach a new international economic order.
3. HUMAN RIGHTS
Poverty is not only a socioeconomic problem, it also constitutes the greatest
and most unjust violation of human rights, not only the social, economic and
cultural ones, but the civil and political ones as well. As a result of the
injustice reigning throughout our world today, poverty is now present not only
in the countries in the South, but also in those in the North. In developed
States in North America and Western Europe, unemployment prevents millions of
people from enjoying their human right to work; discrimination against Blacks,
Latins, Indians and other minorities, practiced both by authorities and
organizations of the USA, against gypsies and Turkish, Asian and African
immigrants in Europe, is another face of the violation of people´s
fundamental rights. Under the protection of neoliberal policies,
the majority of governments in the North have reduced their health and
education budgets in detriment of the human rights of a wide range of
social groups within their own countries.
For these reasons – though they are not the only ones – it is time to put an
end to the attempts of developed countries to act as masters or judges for the
Third World countries in this field, because it is increasingly evident that
behind these attitudes persist old imperial appetites designed to impose
on other peoples the values, the economic system and the forms of government of
the developed West.
In 1948 the international community adopted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, while in 1993 it also approved the Vienna Declaration and Plan of
Action, which represented important touchstones in the struggle for complete
human dignity, but the correct implementation of these documents on a global
scale cannot ignore the political, economic, social and cultural diversity of
the world we live in. It requires putting an end to the discrimination that
Western powers have imposed on economic, social and cultural rights, in
relation to the civil and political ones. All human rights are for us of the
same value, and the violation of any of them must be equally rejected. That is
why we cannot accept the void in which they try to keep the fundamental human
rights affecting the interests of vital groups of people, such as the right to
development and to the self-determination of the peoples.
It might seem ironic that the Government of the United States of America, which
for fourty years has systematically violated all the rights of the Cuban people
with its economic and trade blockade, tries to appear as the main speaker for
the human rights of the Cuban people. Such an aberration is possible only in a
contaminated atmosphere, in which preference is given to what the leaders of
the USA consider as the human rights of the Cuban people, outside of the real
rights they are entitled to according to the Universal Declaration and the
Vienna Declaration.
As long as this kind of situation persists and as long as this type of
manipulation is tolerated, humanity will make no progress whatsoever on the
road toward the true universalization of human rights, and all the beautiful
speeches that will be delivered on this subject will be nothing but empty
words.
4. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND THE
ENVIRONMENT
Sustainability requires that development be addressed to the satisfaction of
the needs of all, in harmony with their natural environment, but the
policies now being imposed on the world, in particular during the last
few years, follow the opposite direction.
While imposing on the developing countries their scale of values, their
economic system and their forms of government, the block of developed countries
is spreading their depredatory consumer habits throughout the world. As a
result of this policy, deforestation and acid rains yearly destroy about
40 million hectares of woods, erosion of the soil has carried off 26 million
metric tons of the vegetable lode and desertification is affecting more than 6
million hectares of land. A fifth of all the species of the world could
disappear in the next twenty years, threatening biodiversity with destruction.
The pollution contaminating air, water, rivers and seas, endangers the
life of whole populations. Climatic changes have stimulated and multiplied
diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy and asthma.
The responsibility for this disaster falls almost exclusively on the developed
countries, which produce more than 75 % of the gases
that provoke the so-called hothouse effect, 40 % of sulphur dioxide and 54 % of
nitrogen oxide, that cause acid rains and severe climatic changes. They are
also behind the production of 68 % of all industrial toxic waste. The greatest
polluting country of all is the United States of America, directly responsible
for 25 % of the greenhouse effect gases launched into space.
It is the United States of America, however, that leads the efforts carried out
by the developed countries, whose governments have come together to prevent a
reasonable solution that might put an end to the gradual killing off of the
world. That became quite clear during the Summit on Climatic Changes held in
Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, when the USA dared propose the unheard-of idea
that countries could buy the right to send toxic gases into the
atmosphere. The failure of that meeting proves that some developed States give
more weight in their policies to the lucrative interests of their transnational
corporations than to the instinct of survival of the human race.
Now that we have entered the new millennium, it is imperative to answer the
challenge represented by the sustainable and equal development of all,
eliminate discriminatory practices and the blind control exerted by the
forces of the market, as well as the total and complete power carried out by
the transnational corporations. The countries of the South will also have to
increase their mutual cooperation and consolidate their capacity for mutual
support. The North, which has benefited from the expansion and
liberalization of trade between our countries, will have to contribute to
their development by transferring a great part of the technical and human
resources they control and the know-how they have, including technology.
5. FACING THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALIZATION,
ACHIEVING OF EQUITY, JUSTICE AND DIVERSITY
The process of globalization is an objective phenomenon expressing the strong
interconnection reached by different economies, and it has had a deep impact on
international relations, in particular as a consequence of technological
development, especially in the electronics and communications sectors, with the
natural increase in economic, scientific, technological and cultural exchanges.
These technological developments stimulated the growth and expansion of
the transnational corporations, which grew from
around 7000 in the seventies, to close to 39 000 in the
nineties. By that time the number of branch offices
reached the 270 000 mark It is significative that more than 90 % of the
main offices are to be found in the USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and
Holland, whereas 41 % of the branches are in developing countries.
Due to their organization, transnational corporations resemble huge octopuses
whose modus operandi is characterized by their desire to hide the
national origin of their capital, give a corporative nationality to their
activity and follow vertical structures, the result of which prevents their
branches from being legally controlled by the States in which they reside.
These organizations become incrusted in the decisive economic spheres of the
developing countries, and end up being true destabilizing factors for those
markets.
The transnational corporations are, therefore, the main agents behind the
neoliberal policies that world powers have been imposing through the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization,
aggravating the inequalities existing in the distribution of riches and
increasing poverty.
The gap separating the rich from the poor countries is greater today than one
hundred years ago. Some of these countries have a percapita GNP of 25 000
dollars a year. Others, the majority, range from 300 to 1500 dollars percapita.
Forty percent of world trade is in the hands of 350 transnational groups.
Just 358 individuals concentrate the
massive amount of 62 billion dollars, while about two thirds of the
world population lives with less than 2 dollars a day, and 1.2 billion people
do not even have a dollar a day to survive on.
So, while on the one hand technology and trade create excellent conditions for
an economic and social development that could satisfy the needs of the
world population as a whole, on the other, neoliberal policies aim not only at
maintaining old inequalities and injustices in the international economic
order, they also tend to intensify them. This constitutes an open
contradiction with present-day needs. The opportunities for economic
development, derived from the globalization and liberalization of trade,
finances and investments, must be available on an equal footing to all
countries, peoples and social spheres.
The lack of equity today generates major problems of a social, economic and
environmental nature, whose solutions are now urgent. This lack of equality is
the main cause for the social convulsions that have placed on the agenda of
international debates the subject of governability – a problem that cannot be
solved globally without a radical transformation of the conditions that are
behind it.
This governability is being damaged not only in Third World countries, but also
in those belonging to the First World, where increasing poverty of the middle
classes, unemployment and the scandals of corruption have brought into question
the credibility of the political institutions of the system.
6. STRENGTHENING AND DEMOCRATIZING THE
UNITED NATIONS AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
The role of the United Nations in our world is unique and it must
necessarily be a relevant one in view of its possibilities to help solve
the above-mentioned problems as well as prevent conflicts and crisis,
according to the letter and the spirit of the Charter and the international
agreements and treaties that humanity has suscribed during the last hundred
years as a result of the efforts made to achieve international cooperation
and the preservation of world peace.
But the United Nations is now going through a series of simultaneous crises endangering
its future. At the very root of this serious problem lie historic and political
causes. The number of member States is today three times greater than at the
time of its creation. The bipolar world that came to life and developed during
its first 45 years has now disappeared. The rightist forces within the US
Congress have unleashed a policy to blackmail the UN, leading the United States
to breach its financial obligations toward this organization. Under pressure
from the US and as a result of the lack of resources that this situation has
created within the UN, structures that are essential for the poor countries are
being dismantled: those related to assistance for development, or those
designed to analyze and control the activities of the transnational
corporations.
Humankind must strengthen the role of the UN to maintain international peace
and security through efficient collective measures, peaceful means and
the respect for the principles of justice and International Law; stimulate
friendly relations among nations based on the principle of equality of rights
and the free determination of the people, and noninterference in their internal
matters; apply international cooperation to the solution of economic, social,
cultural and humanitarian problems and the strengthening of respect for human
rights, the basic freedoms of all, irrespective of their race, language or
religion; reject all kinds of aggression, menace or the use of military or
economic force, and work toward the respect for cultural traditions, national
habits, historic heritage and the identity of the nations and the peoples.
The policies and regulations they want to impose, however, aim at intensifying
the manipulation of the UN by the US and a small group of great powers that use
privileges which contradict the democratic principles that must prevail
in international relations, such as the unacceptable right to veto, the control
and manipulation over the Security Council, and the imposition of this body
over the General Assembly. Such policies must be rejected and replaced by the
democratization of the United Nations, the elimination of the right to veto,
the enlargement of the Security Council and the consolidation of the functions
and role of the General Assembly, as necessary steps toward an increasingly
stronger role for the UN in its mission to guarantee international peace and
security.
From the very beginning, the NGOs in the United Nations have supported the
organization and its Charter. In today's globalized and unipolar world, the
support and defense of the UN is more urgent than ever, because it is an
imperative to prevent the United Nations from losing its condition as heritage
to all States and peoples, and from becoming an instrument in the
materialization of the designs and ambitions of a few powerful groups.
Since the creation of the UN, the NGOs have given it their support and
contributed to the promotion of its objectives, speaking out in favor of
sectors often marginalized or ignored by the official policy of their
governments, and they can and must give their specific contribution to this
world organization making it more transparent, democratic and representative.
Intensifying the cooperation of the United Nations with these organizations is
a positive action that increases its transparency and democratization, proving
that it must be perfected and extended to those bodies and structures which are
still absent from it.
The organizations signing this document, both Cuban NGOs and international NGOs
with offices in Cuba and in special consultative status with the ECOSOC,
express their determination to work together with all those truly interested in
saving and strengthening the United Nations. We are part of a community of more
that 2000 nongovernmental organizations, which is continuously enriched by
others produced by our civil society to contribute to the solution of the
multiple problems affecting our people. We have a long experience of collective
work and cooperation with governmental structures. The work of dozens of Cuban
and international NGOs residing in Cuba is present in the struggle to eliminate
illiteracy and unemployment, activate the agrarian reform,
implement various campaigns to improve health conditions for our people,
promote humanist values in our culture, defend the rights of women and
children, contribute to the work carried out by our doctors, teachers and other
professionals in other lands and for other people. We place our modest but
interesting experience before all those who would like to learn from it, while
we base ourselved on this very experience to continue our international
cooperation for the safeguard, strengthening and democratization of the United
Nations and the rest of the international organizations.
It is in that spirit that we have prepared for the Millennium Summit and the
Forum of NGOs, with conferences, debates and workshops, whose results are
the opinions expressed in this document. They reflect the desire of our people
that throughout this new millennium, the UN may continue its existence,
increase its democratic and transparent nature, and preserve all the good
aspects it has represented up to now.
Asociación Cubana de las Naciones Unidas (ACNU) (Cuban Association for the
United Nations)
Asociación Nacional de Economistas de Cuba (ANEC) (National Association
of Cuban Economists)
Centro de Estudios sobre Asia y Oceania (CEAO) (Center for the Study of Asia
and Oceania)
Centro de Estudios Europeos (CEE) (Center for the Study of Europe)
Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud (CESJ) (Center for the Study of Youth)
Centro Felix Varela (Felix Varela Center)
Federación de Mujeres Cubanas (FMC) (Federation of Cuban Women)
Movimiento Cubano por la Paz y la Soberanía de los Pueblos (MOPAZ) (Cuban
Movement for the Peace and Sovereignty of the Peoples)
Organización Continental de Estudiantes Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (OCLAE),
(Continental Organization of Latinamerican and Caribbean Students)
Organización de Solidaridad de los Pueblos de Africa, Asia y América Latina (OSPAAAL)
(Organization for Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin
America)
Unión Nacional de Juristas de Cuba (UNJC) (National Union of Cuban
Jurists)