President of Cuba inaugurates the work of the G77 Summit | News

The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, inaugurated this Friday the work of the G77 Summit held in the Caribbean country that currently presides over the group of Southern nations, on which occasion he called on the nations that make up it to act together to break down the barriers that hinder access to knowledge and technology, which slows down their development and prevents them from responding to the desires for peace and well-being of their people.

READ ALSO:

How many G77 summits have been held?

After welcoming the heads of State, Government and delegations attending the Summit that will meet in Havana until this Saturday, Díaz-Canel stressed the anachronistic and unfair nature of the current international economic order, as well as the urgency of changing it and democratize the United Nations, challenges that - he recalled - were reflected in warnings made by revolutionary leaders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez.

He pointed out that humanity has reached an unimaginable scientific-technical potential, which under conditions of equality, equity and justice could provide decent and comfortable living standards to almost the entire population of the planet.

He stated that advancing in the field of science, technology and innovation will translate how and when the sustainable development goals can be achieved regarding zero hunger and poverty, health services, quality education, equality of gender, access to energy, work, industrialization and social justice, among other goals.

He emphasized that the current economic order perpetuates the conditions of privilege for rich countries and leaves a considerable part of humanity in underdevelopment.

Among other negative impacts caused by this situation, he mentioned the fractures in the production of goods and services, the deficient attention to health, the imbalance in Internet access, the disproportionate gap in access to electricity between rich countries and developing nations. development, and the small number of patents that the latter register.

He questioned that despite the scientific-technical development achieved, the world went back three decades in terms of poverty reduction, there are levels of famine not seen since 2005, more than 84 million children remain out of school, more than 600 million people are not They have electricity and only 36 percent of the population uses the Internet.

He expressed that the economic gap also limits the South's investments in research in health, food, and the environment, and denounced that in parallel the specialists they train and even the technologies they generate are stolen from these countries.

He assured that the people of the South are the ones who suffer the most from the consequences of underdevelopment and questioned that they are called poor when they should be considered impoverished after centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism.

He recalled that the Covid-19 pandemic starkly demonstrated the cost of the exclusion of the South. He cited that only ten manufacturers concentrated 70 percent of the production of anticovid vaccines, while developing countries could only have 24 doses of vaccines per 100 inhabitants while the richest countries had almost 150 doses.

When referring to the path that lies ahead to build a new world order and a new financial architecture, Díaz-Canel specified that the G77 + China today groups 134 nations, which represent two thirds of the countries that make up the UN and concentrate the 80 percent of the world's population, in addition to 50 percent of global GDP.

He expressed that the Summit will allow for collective debate at the highest political level and to reconcile positions and identify action strategies. He expressed that the South has strengths - "we are more and we are more diverse," he said - and that it can achieve better results with solidarity and collaboration.

He asserted that for all the time the North accommodated the world to its interests to the detriment of the rest, it is now up to the South to change the rules of the game.

He called to rescue trust in human beings and their creative activity, and to generate capacities to realize the potential of science, technology and innovation for sustainable development. In this regard, he recognized the global development initiative promoted by Chinese President Xi Jinping for its inclusive nature.

He also referred to the importance of political will to invest in science. In that sense, he gave the example of Cuba to demonstrate how despite the criminal US blockade, imposed for more than six decades and reinforced in recent years, the Caribbean country was able to design several of its own anticovid vaccines with high and proven effectiveness.

The opening ceremony and first work session of the G77 + China was attended by the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, and the Secretary General of the UN, António Guterres.