HAVANA, Cuba, Sat. Sept. 16, 2023
Some 24 years after visiting Cuba in 1999 as then Minister of Education under the Said Musa administration, Deputy Prime Minister Cordel Hyde returned to our vaunted sister Caribbean nation. His visit was on the occasion of the G77 + China Summit which started on Friday, September 15 and concluded the following day. The Group, as a bloc of countries from the Global South, represents 80% of the world’s population. The theme for this year’s summit was “Current development challenges: role of science, technology and innovation.”
The group was established in 1964 with the objective of advancing the collective economic interests of the then 77 countries which were signatories to a joint declaration at the end of the first session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, Switzerland. According to its website, the organization also serves to enhance the bloc’s “joint negotiating capacity on all major international economic issues within the United Nations system, and promote South-South cooperation for development.” The bloc now features 134 members, with Mexico announcing (at this latest summit) its return to the Group after having departed in 1994. As to China, although it is listed as a member, it insists that it’s only a supporter of the organization’s mission. Their representative, Li Xi, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, said in Havana that China “will always make South-South cooperation a priority.” The Group initiates resolutions and decisions in the UN General Assembly. It was noted during this latest summit that the weight of the bloc will be determined by how much its discussions factor into the UN General Assembly meeting which began today, Wednesday, September 19, in New York.
At the conclusion of the summit on Saturday, the group called for a new world order with more participation from the Global South in the global governance system. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said the “world is failing developing nations” and pointed to them being “trapped in a tangle of global crises,” including climate change and ballooning foreign debt. Looking to the future, Cuba affirmed that the organization emerged stronger with renewed unity after the two-day sojourn.
Hyde was deputizing for Prime Minister John Briceño, who had to travel to New York for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Summit of World Leaders from September 18 to 19.
DPM Hyde in his remarks paid homage to Cuba and described it as the ideal to follow when it comes to science and technology. In reiterating our nation’s gratitude to Cuba for its support of our quest for nationhood, Hyde remarked, “We would not have done it without you. Nelson Mandela once wrote that when the Cubans went to Africa, it was the first time a country had come from another continent not to take away but to help Africans to achieve their freedom. That is the Cuba we know – a country that gives beyond what it can afford. All you do is give and give to your brother and sister countries, whether it’s scholarships, or doctors or nurses or medicine or sports, or culture or technology. You just keep on giving, and we in Belize and all over the South can never stop thanking you. You have a special place in the hearts of people all over the world.”
From there, DPM Hyde segued into a call for the end of cruel and unfair classifications by the international financial institutions and the developed world against Cuba. He commented, “It’s uncomfortable for me to be here discussing in comfort this laudable idea of us working toward a more equitable world where citizens have the opportunity to innovate, thrive and add value to their communities, when right at this very moment, there are arbitrary, unilateral, coercive and immoral blockades on this, your country, and too many others. These are barriers to development designed to sow rot at the roots.” He then asked, “What will we do about this continued designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism and the eternal embargo imposed on the people of Cuba?” Hyde described the “nefarious blockade” against Cuba that started in February 1962 as an “affront to the humanitarian assistance offered across the world by this one small country.” Hyde affirmed that the losses in revenue to the 11.26 million people of Cuba as at 2021 are in the billions.
DPM Hyde then described the summit as heartwarming in its age-old goal of bringing the developing countries together to tackle shared problems. He noted, “We meet at a deadly time for our peoples all over the developing world. A buffet of external/internal calamities breathe down our throats. The skyrocketing cost of living mixed with crushing poverty mixed with perennial low and no income has been a deadly cocktail for our collective people of the South. It’s like we are on a downhill march to perdition. It’s like the end is nigh.” However, he said working together, we can do something about it. As it relates to the persistent issues that dog the developing world, including climate change and access to climate financing, Hyde indicated, “I grudgingly concede that we must put on record our demand for greater representation in global decision-making, the need to close the gender/digital divide, the need for the fulfillment of pledged assistance for the development of the South, and the need to confront the brain drain of our specialized human resources. Although we know that historically, they have not heeded these calls, we put it on record because it’s the right thing to do. And the leaders of the North say they are about the right things; perhaps they may surprise us and oblige us, this one time. But if they don’t – and they probably won’t, we have ourselves, all 134 of us. And we have the awesomely brilliant example of Cuba, who has risen to miraculous heights in science and technology and biotechnology despite the wickedly cruel blockade and the classification of a state that sponsors terrorism. It’s indicative of what we can do, what we can be if we harness all we have TOGETHER!”