Cuba's International Relations: The Anatomy of a Nationalistic Foreign Policy by H. Michael Erisman

Author:H. Michael Erisman [Erisman, H. Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429717734
Google: Hd2iDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 9051014
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1985-07-02T00:00:00+00:00

Appendix 4.4 Speech to the UN General Assembly, New York, October 12, 1979

Meeting in Havana, the Movement has just reaffirmed its principles and confirmed its objectives.

The non-aligned countries stress the fact that it is necessary to do away with the abysmal inequality that separates the developed from the developing countries. We are struggling to eradicate the poverty, hunger, sickness and illiteracy from which hundreds of millions of human beings still suffer. We aspire to a new world order, based on justice, equity and peace, to replace the unjust, unequal system which now prevails, in which, as proclaimed in the Havana Final Declaration, "wealth is still concentrated in the hands of a few Powers whose wasteful economies are maintained by the exploitation of the labour as well as the transfer and plunder of the natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world."

Mr. Chairman, history has taught us that, when a people that frees itself from a colonial or neo-colonial system obtains access to independence, that is, at one and the same time, the last action in a long struggle and the first one in another difficult battle, for the independence, sovereignty and freedom of our apparently free peoples are continuously threatened by external control over their natural resources; financial imposition by official international bodies; and the precarious situation of their economies, which reduces their full sovereignty.

The Director General of the FAO Council has acknowledged that "Progress is still disappointingly slow in relation to the long-term development goals contained in the International Development Strategy, the Declaration and the Programme of Action on the establishment of the New International Economic Order and the Resolution of the World Food Conference and in several subsequent conferences." We are still far from having achieved the modest 4 percent per annum average increase in the developing countries' food and agricultural production which was proposed ten years ago in order to solve some of the most pressing problems of world hunger and to approach consumption levels that are still low. As a result, the developing countries' food imports, which right now constitute an aggravating factor in their unfavourable balance of payments, will soon—according to the FAO—reach unmanageable proportions. In the face of this, official commitments of foreign aid to agriculture in the developing countries are falling off.

This panorama cannot be embellished. Certain official documents sometimes reflect circumstantial increases in the agricultural production of some areas of the underdeveloped world or stress the cyclical price increases registered by some agricultural items, but it is a case of transitory advances of short-lived advantages. The developing countries' agricultural export revenues are still unstable and insufficient to meet their import needs for foodstuffs, fertilizersand other items required to raise their own production. In Africa, food production per inhabitant was 11 percent lower in 1977 than ten years earlier.

If backwardness in agriculture is perpetuated, the industrialization process cannot advance, either. It cannot advance because most of the developed countries view the industrialization of the developing countries as a threat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.