UN General Assembly
1998

population, are not duly represented. For Cuba, the one steadfast and sincere thing to do is to alert the world to which we belong, and to struggle for the values of freedom, justice, dignity and humanitarianism that we believe in and uphold. These are the values that should prevail for the sake of our endangered human species. It is for this end that the resources made available to the United Nations by its Member States should be used. Enough of politicizing budgets under the pretext of alleged cost-effectiveness — as if the millions of African children dying of curable diseases, the millions of illiterate people in Latin America, or the millions of people displaced by conflicts in Asia and the Middle East were bolts of cloth, raw materials or spent fuel. Enough of the appalling facts cited in the latest Human Development Report, issued two weeks ago, which affirms that the barest consumption needs of over a billion people are not being met at all, and that more than 4 billion people lack essential health services and 2 billion suffer