Lizette Vila Espina | Palomas Project, Audiovisual Production Company for Social Activism (Cuba)
Dear friends, because the feminism of many of us also needs to relate to men who were not born as machistas, abusers, or aggressors. They are the result of a colonizing and imperial model that subjugates them, enslaves them, and reduces them to the most primitive aspects of the human species.
We come to this gathering recalling that in 1975 in Mexico City, in 1980 in Copenhagen, five years later in Nairobi, and in 1995 in Beijing, governments, institutions, and women from all over the world reflected on our challenges, struggles, and hopes.
Some people may wonder why so much effort is being put into revitalizing Beijing 30 years later, amid the many tensions experienced by our peoples, particularly our beloved Palestine and Venezuela. The answer is very simple but equally challenging! To this day, the Beijing Platform for Action remains the most visionary, comprehensive, and progressive program for the realization of the rights of all women and girls, in all their diversity.
In September 1995, the governments of 189 countries unanimously declared that equality between women and men was a matter of human rights, a condition for achieving social justice, and a fundamental requirement for development, sustainability, and peace.
We must return to Beijing at a very complex time, when anti-rights, imperial, colonizing, warmongering, and patriarchal tendencies at the global level threaten the few achievements made in favor of gender justice, environmental justice, and social justice.
A high-level meeting held on Monday, September 22, at the United Nations General Assembly warned that none of the Sustainable Development Goals related to gender equality are on track to be met. Unfortunately, in today’s world, six times more is spent on war than on protecting women and guaranteeing their rights.
It is time to build a broader consensus, open more fertile paths, and take more practical actions for this cause, as the comprehensive development of women still faces very complex challenges, such as jointly establishing a governance model to protect women’s rights and interests and writing a new chapter in promoting global cooperation among us.
A few days ago, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that states must “expand channels for women’s participation in political life and decision-making” and promote their presence in national and social governance. This will be a way to ensure that the freedom, emancipation, and sovereignty of our peoples are not a pipe dream but a project of humanization where all people have the same opportunities and possibilities.
To this end, it is urgent that we have greater representation in politics and public administration so that gender justice is truly internalized in all societies.
Peace and stability are prerequisites for the comprehensive development of women, and it is necessary to strengthen mechanisms against violence and thus refute all forms of abuse.
Continue to count on Cuba, free, independent, sovereign, and conscious, as the empire insists on rolling back our achievements to return to those stories disguised as false freedoms.
To Palestine, Venezuela, and anywhere else where women and girls, men and boys suffer, Cuba’s embrace reaches out… for Cuba is also a woman.
Thank you very much.