Cuba's tireless efforts to help other countries have not gone unrecognized by the international community. In the face of an ever-increasing terrorist problem around the world, the United Nations voted to create its first ever Human Rights Council. According to its website, "The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the UN system made up of 47 States responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe. The Council was created by the UN General Assembly on 15 March 2006 with the main purpose of addressing situations of human rights violations and make recommendations on them."
But more importantly than just the creation of a council of international dignitaries to try to stop this global spread of human rights violations, is the fact that for one of the rarest of moments at the UN, the United States was not voted as a founding member, but Cuba was. The world had apparently seen enough of a country that starts one illegal war after another and voted, instead, for a country that starts one free medical school after another.
The internet magazine ZNet, published the UN speech by Felipe Perez Roque, Foreign Minister of the Republic of Cuba, entitled, Exit U.S., Enter Cuba. In part he said, "Today is a particularly symbolic day. Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council and the United States is not. Cuba was elected with the overwhelming support of 135 countries; more than two-thirds of the United Nations General Assembly, while the United States did not even dare to run as a candidate.
The election for Cuba came at a moment in which nearly 30,000 Cuban doctors were saving lives and alleviating the pain in 70 countries, while the United States reached that stage with 150,000 invading soldiers, sent to kill and die in an unjust and illegal war.
The election for Cuba came with more than 300,000 patients from 26 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean who were recovering their eyesight thanks to the cost-free surgeries performed by Cuban eye specialists. It came for the United States with over 100,000 civilians murdered and 2,500 American youths dead in a war concocted to steal a country's oil and give away sumptuous contracts to a group of cronies of the President of the world's sole superpower."
Over the past 30 years the destinies of both countries have marched down decidedly different paths. Cuba has rededicated its revolution to alleviating suffering and oppression around the world. It has sent doctors to the far corners of the Earth to help the afflicted. It has set up schools in many countries, provided medical training for hundreds of thousands from around the world, and continued to pioneer new treatments at no cost to the patient.
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