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Are we all equal? According to the UN
Charter, yes; but according to real life, no

SPEECH GIVEN BY THE CUBAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN RELATIONS AT THE 54TH SESSION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

New York, September 24, 1999

Mr. Chairman,

Mr. Secretary General,

Distinguished delegates,

Felipe Pérez Roque Gathered here in this hall today are representatives of wealthy countries, and also representatives of poor countries, who constitute the majority. There are ministers and ambassadors from countries whose per capita Gross Domestic Product is 25,000 US dollars, and others who represent countries where that figure is a mere 300 US dollars. And that difference grows by the year.

In this hall, there are representatives of countries that appear to have a promising future ahead of them. These are the countries that account for only 20% of the world's population, yet control 86% of its Gross Domestic Product, 82% of its export markets, 68% of direct foreign investments, and 74% of all of the telephone lines on the planet. But what can be said about the future of those we represent here which account for 80% of the world's population, countries that were colonized and plundered for centuries to increase the wealth of the former metropolises?

It is true that time has passed, and that our history is what it is and not what we might have liked it to be. But, must we simply accept a future that is essentially the same? Can we feel reassured while knowing that the wealth of the three richest people in the world is greater than the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries with their 600 million population, whose representatives are present in this hall today demanding justice?

Here today we have with us representatives of countries where the majority of the population, which scarcely registers any growth, is guaranteed decent living standards and where a certain percentage of the population lives in genuine opulence. Those spend 12 billion US dollars on perfume and 17 billion US dollars on pet food every year.

But there is a majority represented in this hall that has no reason to feel optimistic. This majority comprises 900 million people who go hungry and 1.3 billion who live in poverty. My brothers and sisters who are here today representing Africa cannot feel reassured. They know that there are 23 million people on their continent who are HIV positives. They also know that it costs 12,000 dollars a year to treat just one person infected with the virus, which means it would take almost 300 billion dollars a year for all of the AIDS patients in Africa to receive the same treatment currently provided to AIDS patients in wealthy countries.

Would it be possible for my colleagues representing six billion of the planet's inhabitants to which a further 80 million are added every year, most of them in Third World, to believe that a situation like this could carry on unchanged into the next century?

How can any of us prevent the continued growth in the number of emigrants from poor nations who flock to the wealthy countries in pursuit of a dream, while the current world economic order does not allow them to find the conditions for a decent life in their own land?

A small number of my colleagues in this hall represent countries that have no need to fear a military threat in the coming century. Some even have nuclear weapons, belong to a powerful Alliance or build-up their armies every year with better, more sophisticated weapons. They view the rest of the world as merely the Euro-Atlantic periphery of NATO, and thus they will never have to endure the devastation of massive bombings by invisible attackers acting under what has come to be known as the New Strategic Concept of that aggressive military organization.

Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of those of us gathered here today do not enjoy such security. We are troubled to see that in a world dominated by a single military and technological power, we are less safe today than during the difficult years of the Cold War.

If one day we wished to call upon the Security Council to discuss a situation that we viewed as a threat to our poor countries, do you think we would be heard, your Excellencies? I fear than recent examples have proved otherwise.

Why is there no discussion in this hall about general and complete disarmament, including nuclear disarmament? Why is the issue limited to controlling light arms, which are needed as in the case of Cuba, a country attacked and blockaded for 40 years? Why is there no mention of the deadly laser-guided bombs, the depleted uranium missiles, or the cluster or graphite bombs used indiscriminately by the United States in the bombing of civilian populations in Kosovo?

Could anyone claim that our children would inherit a just and secure world if we do not change the unfair and unequal standards that are currently used to measure issues of such key importance to our collective security?

Must we also accept the imposition of the free market rules and the sacred law of supply and demand in the brutal commerce of death? What is stopping the international community from attempting, in a rational and coordinated manner, to redirect a large part of the 780 billion dollars currently used on military spending to promote development in the Third World countries?

This is why we so passionately defend respect for the principles of international law, which have guided relations among all of the world's countries for more than half a century. What would we have left to defend ourselves with in the future, if we poor countries were no longer able to invoke such principles as respect for sovereignty and self-determination, the sovereign equality of all states, and non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations? How could we call on the international community to protest a threat posed against one of our countries, if these principles, which are systematically and flagrantly violated today, were to be removed from the Charter of the United Nations?

In a unipolar world, attempts to impose notions like the limitation of sovereignty and humanitarian intervention do not favor international security and pose a threat to countries of the Third World, which have neither powerful armies nor nuclear weapons. Such attempts must therefore be brought to an end. They violate the letter and the spirit of the UN Charter.

At the same time, we believe it is necessary to defend the United Nations, now more than ever. We defend the need for its existence as much as we do its democratization. The challenge facing us is that of reforming the United Nations so that it serves the interests of all nations equally.

We defend both the need for the existence of the Security Council and the need to make it more encompassing, democratic and transparent. Why not increase the number of permanent members? Why could they not include at least two or three new permanent members from Latin America, Africa and Asia? After all, there is now three times the number of member countries who founded the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945, and the vast majority of them, namely the Third World countries, do not have a single permanent member to represent them.

However, we do not defend the right of veto. We do not believe that anyone should have it. But if it were not possible to eliminate it, we should at least attempt to ensure that this prerogative is more evenly shared, and that all new permanent members also have the right of veto. Why , if the right of veto cannot be eliminated now, it is not rstricted to those measures proposed under Chapter VII of the Charter?

Under the present conditions, a single country can override the will of all the other UN members. And there is one country that has exercised its unlimited right to veto an infinite number of times: the United States of America. This situation is unsustainable.

At the United Nations, we must halt the attempt to impose a single way of thinking and the intent to make us believe that it is ours, or that it is superior to our rich diversity of cultures and models, or that it is more advanced and modern than our multiplicity of identities. In order to survive, we must oppose the view that we are merely the Euro-Atlantic periphery and the label of global threat on the problems we face as a consequence of colonialism, underdevelopment and the consumerism of the wealthy countries, or even as a consequence of their recent or current policies

There are in this hall today representatives of the Group of Seven with a combined population of 685 million whose economies add up to a GDP of 20 trillion US dollars.

But, also present are we representatives of the other 181 countries with more than five billion inhabitants and a combined GDP of barely 10 trillion dollars.

Are we all equals? According to the Charter of the United Nations, yes. In real life, no.

While the wealthy countries have the transnational companies, which control more than a third of worldwide exports, we poor countries carry the asphyxiating burden of the foreign debt that has reached two trillion dollars and continues to grow, while devouring almost 25% of our exports just to cover interest payments. How could development be possible under such circumstances?

While some in this hall talk insistently of the need for a new international financial architecture, our countries suffer the impact of a system that allows daily speculative operations amounting to three trillion US dollars. That architecture is beyond repair. It is not a question of renovating it but rather of demolishing it and building a completely new one.

Can anyone explain the rational behind this ghost economy, which produces nothing and is sustained by selling and buying things that do not exist? Should we or should we not demolish this chaotic financial system and build upon its ruins a system that favors production, that takes differences into consideration, and that stops forcing our battered economies to endlessly pursue the impossible dream of increasing financial reserves? Sooner or later these reserves will evaporate amidst the desperate and unfair struggle to defend our currencies in the face of the highly favored currency established by the anachronistic Bretton Woods agreement: the sacrosanct US dollar.

When the history of these years is written, it will be very difficult to explain how a single country was able to accumulate so many privileges and such absolute power. What will next century's economists say when they realize that the United States lived with a current account deficit that is now around 300 billion dollars, without the IMF imposing upon it a single one of the severe economic adjustment programs that are impoverishing the Third World nations? Who will be able to explain that, thanks to the privilege of controlling the world's reserve currency, Americans save less and spend more than anyone else in the world? Will anyone tell them that it 1998, they imported 124 billion dollars worth of cars or spent 8 billion dollars on cosmetics, largely due to the fact that they control 17.8% of the votes in the IMF, which gives them a virtual right of veto? How can we explain to the people of Tanzania, for example, that while all of this was happening, they were forced to spend nine times more on servicing the foreign debt than on primary health care, and four times more than on primary education?

The current international economic system is not only profoundly unjust but absolutely unsustainable. An economic system that destroys the environment cannot be sustained. The world's supply of drinking water today is 60% of what it was in 1970, and today there are 2.3 billion more of us on the planet than there were back then. The same thing is happening with our forests. Could anyone in this hall claim that such a rapid pace of destruction can go on indefinitely?

Nor is it possible to sustain an economic system based on the wealthy nations irrational consumption patterns, which are later exported to our own countries through the mass media. Why not accept that it is possible to provide a decent life to all of the people on the planet with the resources within our reach, with the degree of technological development achieved and through the rational and fairly distributed exploitation of all this potential?

How will they explain that the OECD member countries, whose representatives I now address with all due respect, have fallen so far behind as to provide less than one-third of their 1970 commitment to dedicate a minimum of 0.7% of their GDP to Official Development Aid?

I asked a member of our delegation, a deputy in our National Assembly and a professed Christian, what the Bible would say about such an unjust economic order, and he quickly responded with this quote from the holy book: "Isaiah, Chapter 10, Verses 1, 2 and 3: Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness which they have prescribed; To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation that shall come from afar? To whom will ye flee for help? And where will ye leave your glory?"

II PART

Reply by Peter Burleigh, U.S. permanent alternate representative to the UN

Hassan Pérez’ counter-reply at the 5th UN General Assembly