UNICEF: Cuba is an example in children protection

By Marcos Alfonso
Cuban Agency News

It is a never ending story. The US authorities don’t know what else to come up with in their efforts against Cuba.

The latest example of their sick manoeuvres is the inclusion of Cuba among the worst countries in terms of human trafficking in a US State Department report on this topic.

Then, the Cuban answer was immediate. The head of the North America Department at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs Josefina Vidal described as “false and disrespectful” the US allegations on human trafficking and the unbelievable inclusion of Cuban among the worst.

A paradox: just five days previous to the release of the report, UNICEF representative Juan José Ortiz made this statement in Havana:

“On the planet, millions of children lack schools and vaccination against preventable diseases, besides being the object of labour and sexual exploitation in the international prostitution networks and none of them is Cuban”

During the last years Cuba achieved positive results in major indicators regarding children protection, which makes it the country with the highest standards on children’s quality life.

“Tell me what you boast of, and I’ll tell you your weaknesses” is a Spanish aphorism that suits the US just fine in this case.

In this world we are living in, the nation that can show off of having all kinds of trafficking, human, narcotics, and other scourges like mob, murders, wars, and so on, is the one to evaluate other countries, that, according to its Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was the key for this report.

To Cubans these allegations are just slander: there is no other way to describe this new category the US is trying to dump on Cuba, by the way, it is the first time. So much for a new idea.

“These shameful slanders deeply offend the Cuban people. There is no sex trafficking of children in Cuba. Our country has an exemplary record in the protection of children, youths and women,” the statement notes.

“Cuban legislation and measures adopted in this regard place Cuba among the leading countries of the region with the most advanced norms and mechanisms to prevent and fight human trafficking,” said Vidal

On just a glance it is obvious that the Obama administration authorities neither have been in Cuba nor they read the UNICEF reports.

Going back to Ortiz words: “regarding quality and quantitative spheres you can say that the Convention on Children Rights is very well applied in Cuba, an example nowadays for Latin America”

According to Ortiz: “on that there is the influence of the work of UNICEF along the Cuban government” and stressed that Cuba “is the best of the region’s countries, therefore is a children paradise in Latin America”

Everything is perfectible. Nothing is just black or white. There are shades. As one poet once put it; “I don’t live in a perfect society…” but to say that there is children trafficking or children prostitution is the most disgusting way of attacking Cuba.

Cuba is not a rich country, but that doesn't prevent it from guaranteeing the protection to children, according to UNICEF “something possible thanks to the political will of the Cuban authorities”

The welfare of children is not determined by the financial resources. They are needed, resources, but above all you need lots of love and will.

That is what Cuba has, and like National Hero Jose Marti once said: “children are the world’s hope”