08 October 2023 | For: Institutional Communication Directorate
The Vice Minister of Communications of Cuba, Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández, participates in the High Level Panel IV: “Access and Innovation to Revitalize the SDGs”, at the Internet Governance Forum, which takes place from October 8 to 12 in Kyoto, Japan .
In his speech, this October 8, he thanked the organizers for the invitation to this Panel session. Ernesto Rodríguez Hernández, in his words, recalled that this year marks 20 years since the first phase of the World Summit on the Information Society. “On December 12, 2003, after three days of sessions in the Swiss city of Geneva, the first phase of the Summit ended with the adoption of its final documents by the Heads of State and Government and high-level representatives of 175 countries,” he said. “20 years later, it has been demonstrated, without a doubt, that Information and Communications Technologies in general and the Internet in particular constitute essential tools for the development of countries.
“But it has also been confirmed that this beneficial impact of ICTs and the Internet is significantly lower in developing countries compared to developed countries. “To the existing unjust international economic order is added the inequity in the payment of the international Internet connection, which favors the developed countries where the Internet backbone networks are located, and which implies that developing countries must pay one hundred percent of the traffic of your Internet connection, even if the information flows in both directions. “In addition, the main e-commerce sites are located in developed countries, which results in the net financial flow on the Internet going from developing to developed countries,” said the Cuban Vice Minister of Communications.
”In the case of Cuba, the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America for more than sixty years, and intensified after the unjustified inclusion of Cuba in an arbitrary and unilateral list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism ", causes considerable and tangible damage to the ICT sector and hinders Cuba's effort to promote a digital, inclusive and participatory society, in accordance with the Sustainable Development Goals," said the Vice Minister of Communications.