Cuba reasserts willingness to fight inequalities

HAVANA, Cuba, July 29 (ACN) Speaking at the Second UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake, Cuba’s Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca reasserted his country's willingness to contribute to placing Food Systems at the center of economic and social development agendas to fight hunger, poverty, and inequality and called for promoting cooperation in the agricultural sector through food systems platforms based on social protection and involving young people, women, and rural communities.

“It is essential that we increase multilateral collaboration and prioritize the exchange of experiences in food security, sovereignty and self-sufficiency, nutrition and health, science and innovation, agroecology, agricultural extension, adequate food loss and waste management, and public policies to transform food systems”, he stressed. “The resources to eradicate hunger and transform food systems are available; all that is needed is the political will and commitment to use them for the benefit of our peoples”.

Mr. Fonseca also denounced the 60-plus year-old blockade, which has been intensified to unprecedented levels, and the inclusion of Cuba on the unilateral and arbitrary List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, referring to such policies as “silent atomic bombs that hinder [the Cuban people]'s right to development" (…) through a cruel economic war that prevents us from building an agricultural system capable of meeting all of our needs by depriving us from essential consumables such as fertilizers, pesticides, energy supplies, machinery, agricultural implements and their spare parts, irrigation systems, among others”.