At the International Meeting in Solidarity with Cuba and against Imperialism, held at the Havana Convention Palace, the president pointed out poverty, inequality, hunger and lack of access to education as urgent issues to be resolved.
He stated that in the midst of the most colossal scientific-technical development of all time, the world has gone back three decades in terms of poverty reduction, and today 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger, and 760 million, mostly women, they do not know how to read or write.
The so-called third world – he noted – has more than 84 million children out of school and more than 660 million people without electricity, and only 36 percent of the population uses the Internet in the least developed countries and developing nations.
He explained that by turning to financial markets, southern nations have faced interest rates up to eight times higher than those of developed countries, while military spending by developed countries increased significantly this year.
In that sense, he highlighted the need for unity and solidarity to change the current international economic order, and ensure that fewer resources are allocated to weapons and more to poverty reduction and education.
He pointed out that war is the language used by theoretical powers to resolve conflicts, while poverty grows and the impacts of climate change become greater.
There is a depletion of natural resources and a growing inequality between the poor and the rich, which explains and expresses the limits to which the current international economic order has reached, he stressed.
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