Cuba Goes Before UN Rights Body in May

When Cuba’s case comes before the United Nations Human Rights Council on May 1, the government will be asked to demonstrate real progress since its last appearance in 2009.

As part of a process called the Universal Periodic Review, the UN body will look at how much progress Cuba has made in implementing recommendations made at the last meeting – but only those that it accepted.

In total, the Cuban authorities accepted 60 out of 89 recommendations made by representatives of other countries on the Human Rights Council in 2009.

In a statement issued in February, international rights group Amnesty International recalled that the recommendations accepted by Cuba mostly concerned “economic and social rights policies that had already been implemented”, but also covered a number of key issues like “the promotion and protection of human rights and freedoms, the death penalty, cooperation with UN human rights mechanisms, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners”.

The Cuban authorities acknowledge that progress on implementing the recommendations has been slow, explaining that this is due to the time it takes to adapt national legislation.

They have also sought to re-frame the debate by arguing that United States sanctions amount to a greater human rights abuse than any domestic concerns, and that in any case basic civil and welfare rights are upheld.

Amnesty International says the 2009 review was in any case “highly politicised”, so that the review of Cuba’s human rights record ended up being “weak”.

“With few exceptions, most of the recommendations made by other states did not address the human rights situation in Cuba,” it said..

Cuba dismissed out of hand the minority of recommendations that were hard-hitting, such as a Dutch call for guarantees that independent journalists, human rights activists and political dissidents could exercise basic freedoms without risk of harassment, intimidation or persecution.

The government response was that it rejected any recommendations “based on false or distorted statements… ignorance or lack of information about realities in the country”.

The non-government Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation says there are at least 90 political prisoners in the country. In addition, the 6,600 politically motivated detentions which the commission recorded in 2012 reflect a rising trend – the figure was three times the number of detentions in 2010.

Yaremis Flores Marin is an independent lawyer and citizen journalist in Cuba.

This story was first published on IWPR’s website.