Cuba urges developing nations to fight for equitable world, denounced US sanctions

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau

UNITED NATIONS, 20th Sept. President of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez on Tuesday addressed the leaders stating that the world body facing rising hunger and poverty, developing countries will continue their decades-long fight for a more just and equitable world.

He was speaking on behalf of the global South, calling for reform the international financial systems and boosting support for sustainable development and climate action.

Cuba hosted the summit of the Group of 77 and China, the largest developing country organization at the UN, comprised over 130 nations.

Mr. Diaz-Canel recalled that the bloc was established 60 years ago “to repair centuries of injustice and abandonment” and represents some 80 per cent of the global population.

He cited that G77 countries “do not only have the challenge of development; they have the responsibility of modifying those structures which marginalize us from social progress and turn many peoples of the south into laboratories for renewed forms of domination.”

Foreign Minister added that “a new and more just global contract is imperative.”

He addressed the lack of progress towards SDGs.

Mr. Diaz-Canel noted that world leaders adopted the SDGs 8 years ago as a blueprint for a better world, with promises to end poverty and hunger, and to ensure all children have access to quality education, and to protect the natural environment by 2030.

He said that with the deadline looming, “the panorama is bleak”, he noted that 800 million people are still going hungry while 760 million, two thirds of them women, do not know how to read or write.

Mr. Diaz-Canel stressed that the efforts of developing countries are not enough to make the goals a reality and must be supported by concrete actions to provide access to markets, fairer financing conditions, technology transfers and north-south cooperation.

“The G77 calls for rights and will continue to demand a profound transformation of the current international financial architecture because it is deeply unjust, anachronistic and dysfunctional, because it was designed to profit with the reserves of the south to perpetuate a system of domination that increases underdevelopment and replicates a pattern of modern colonialism,” he said.

On the climate crisis, he criticized industrialized nations for failing to comply with their global commitments, including to mobilize $100 billion annually to assist developing countries with mitigation and adaptation.

He said the G77 will hold a Summit of Leaders of the South in the context of the COP28 UN climate conference in Dubai later this year.

“COP28 will show whether or not beyond speeches, there is a real political will on the part of developed nations to achieve the agreements required in this field that cannot be postponed for any longer,” he said.

He spoke against “unilateral coercive measures, euphemistically called sanctions” levied against Cuba and other nations, such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Zimbabwe, Syria, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Iran.

Mr. Diaz-Canel denounced the 60-year “asphyxiating economic blockade” imposed against his country by the United States, calling it “absolutely unilateral and unjustified”.