Cuba to sign international human

FOREIGN Minister Felipe Pérez Roque is in New York to proceed with the signing of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, exactly as Cuba announced it would on December 10, 2007.

This signing is a sovereign act that formalizes and reaffirms Cuba’s commitment to the postulates of both documents, protected by Cuba’s national judicial code and, especially, by the work and trajectory of the Cuban Revolution in the area of human rights.

While he is in New York, the Cuban foreign minister will meet with the Coordination Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement, of which Cuba currently holds the presidency, with the aim of reviewing NAM activities in preparation for the Movement’s 15th Conference of Ministers, which will take place shortly in Tehran. Pérez Roque will also have talks with the UN secretary general and the president of the General Assembly.

The minister will then travel to Geneva to participate in the High Level Segment of the 7th Ordinary Session of the Human Rights Council, which Cuba will attend as a founding member country. He will also preside over a meeting here of representatives of member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement. Additionally, Pérez Roque is to meet with the director of the Geneva UN Office, with the secretary general of the International Telecommunications Union (UIT), as well as other ministers and leaders of delegations.
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UNITED NATIONS. — Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque said that Cuba’s signing of human rights agreements was a sovereign decision by a government that has never acted and will never act under pressure.