UN Supports Global South from Cuba

By Mike Fuller

Havana, Oct 29 (Prensa Latina) In Havana this week a film about progress on the Millennium Development Goals was shown on the 63rd birthday of the United Nations, the night before its vote on the resolution against the US blockade of Cuba.
The United Nations officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, and according to its charter strives to "maintain international peace, cooperation and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."
The MDGs range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, and were set in 2000 by all the world’s countries and leading development institutions.
They include Ending Poverty and Hunger, Universal Education, Gender Equality, Child Health, Maternal Health, Combat HIV/AIDS, Environmental Sustainability and Global Partnership.
The United Nations System Resident Coordinator in Cuba, Susan McDade said on stage last night at the opening of 8, a film by eight world directors broken into eight segments dedicated to each of the MDGs, that the "different stories strive to show the human side of the suffering."
Right after premiering at the Rome Film Festival the movie aims to raise awareness of world poverty through the cameras of Gael Garcia Bernal, Gus Van Sant, Mira Nair, Jan Kounen, Abderrahmane Sissako, Gaspar Noe, Jane Campion and Wim Wenders.
McDade congratulated Cuba for having officially fulfilled several MDGs and the film opened with scenes of increasingly acute North-South disparity, using inversed gender roles in a divorce scene, a parched dam and bleeding mother to get across some of the messages.
The African schoolgirl Tiya told her teacher in the film that she was skeptical about fulfilment of the top goal to eradicate poverty, because to do that "we need to share the wealth, and people don't like that."
Some progress is being made in sharing with NGO microfinance projects, and the film featured the Mohammed Yunnis global partnership project from Bangladesh to provide direct loans from the haves to the have nots.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in the 2008 Millennium Development Goals report that the global economic slowdown, food security crisis and global warming will directly affect efforts to reduce
poverty.
McDade told Prensa Latina the crisis would affect official assistance flows, but said that it is not a justification for unfulfilment of the MDGs by 2015.
Ban Ki-moon said it is urgent to "put all countries, together, firmly on track towards a more prosperous, sustainable and equitable world," and McDade agrees "that is a shared responsibility, and governments alone can't handle it."
Clearly a contradiction to MDG 8, Global Partnerships for Development, the United States has maintained an economic blockade against Cuba since 1962, against which the United Nations has overwhelmingly voted for 16 consecutive years.
One year ago today, the General Assembly voted 184-4 in favor of ending the 45-year-old United States trade embargo against Cuba, which has caused billions in losses and humanitarian suffering for the island, and is expected to do the same today.

"We're looking forward to it," said McDade to Prensa Latina.

NOTE: For the 17th time, the UN General Assembly voted 185 in favor of ending the blockade, 3 against (US, Israel and Palau) and two abstentions (Micronesia, Marshall Islands).