Cuba was elected Tuesday to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a body composed of 47 member states responsible for promoting and protecting all human rights in the world. Despite campaigns and pressure from the United States, the island holds a seat on that body, among the eight reserved for the Group of Latin American and the Caribbean States.
Cuba was elected with 170 votes, 88 percent of UN members, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said in a Twitter post.
RELATED:
Cuba Rejects Politicization of Human Rights at United Nations
A founding member of the Human Rights Council, which defeated the former Commission on Human Rights, Cuba is elected for the fifth time as a member of the intergovernmental body.
In reporting on the election, Cuba's Foreign Ministry (Minrex) noted that "firmly committed to building an increasingly just society, assuring the welfare of the human being and social justice, our country obtained the secret, direct and individual vote of 170 members of the United Nations General Assembly, as a result of respect and admiration for the humanist work of the Cuban Revolution, the main guarantee for the enjoyment and protection of human rights on the island."
Minrex declared that this step "honors the self-determination and resistance of the Cuban people in the face of serious obstacles and threats caused by the unilateral policy of hostility and aggression and the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States, which constitutes a flagrant, massive and systematic violation of human rights and the main obstacle to the achievement of higher goals in this field."
It is also an acknowledgment - the Foreign Ministry added in a note - "of the significant progress that Cuban men and women have achieved in the enjoyment of all their rights and the country's extensive record of international cooperation in the field of human rights, demonstrating, through concrete facts, its unequivocal willingness to engage in respectful, frank and open dialogue."
"Cuba conducts itself in the Human Rights Council with its own constructive voice, with its experience as a developing country that defends dialogue and cooperation, contrary to punitive approaches and selectivity, in favor of the promotion and protection of all human rights for everybody," Minrex stressed.