Rights of the childhood in Cuba: a critical exercise

By:Mabel Pérez Quintana

The recent report of the North American organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) on the human rights in Cuba claims a reflexive look to the individual freedoms that our social system offers to its citizens. For contextualize the topic, I take advantage of the celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Convention on the Boy's Rights, November 20.

Without forgetting the critical eye, I contrast the main postulates of this juridical instrument-right to the freedom, right to the education, right to the health, right to the equality, among other-with my brother's reality, my cousins, my neighbors, the friends of my neighbors, and those of them: it doesn't fit doubt, the girls and children for me verified they enjoy to fullness their right to the game, to the protection of their parents, to the respect of their sexuality, to express their approaches and listened being, etc. “My children” they are very blissful and, also, very happy. However, I continue the investigation trying to arrive to those infants that “they are gone of the hands.”

In Cuba, the law guarantees the minor security: even before the 89´, when the Organization of United Nations pled for the rights of children and adolescents, it already existed The Code of the Childhood and the Youth to which have been added later ordinances to be moderated at the new times. Political public they establish the commitment of the family, the school and the community in the formation and protection of those smaller than 18 years.

José Juan Ortiz Bru, representative of the UNICEF, went categorical when referring to the situation of the country regarding this topic: Cuba has a peculiarity for many years: to have to the childhood like a political priority. Here the protective environments were created, you potenciated and try to stay to the maximum the protected values at family level, community, of country. Which is the result of that? Because that of the millions of children without school, without health, in organized bands, in prostitution nets... none is Cuban or Cuban.

Of more say that with these favorable results, the twenty anniversary of the Convention on the Boy's Rights was a total revel in the schools of the territory: collective birthday, sport and cultural festivals, interactive forums; and like closing, a concert organized by the UNICEF and the cantautor Raúl Peace, with the participation of artists of the patio and strange, members of the project Schools against Hurricanes.

But, among so many good news, imagine which my surprise would be when discovering that United States is the only country that has not ratified the accepted international treaty of human rights in the history, the one that the Cuban children take place every day. And I say the only country because Somalia, the other one that it lacked of the 192 states members of the UN, announced November 20 that it will ratify the Convention shortly on the Boy's Rights.

Now I wonder how the Latin children will walk, the Afro-Americans, the poor children, the handicapped and all the American children that don't enjoy the indispensable right to live in a state responsible for their protection. I wonder if the Human Rights Watch (HRW) will have time to look to their surroundings and to demand the freedom and the happiness of “their children.”