 we are about to start officially but we are still waiting for a couple of our panelists to join on Zoom. So please stay around. We are about to have a quiet, interesting conversation about the impact of the US sanctions on Cuba with a set of extremely knowledgeable and important panelists here in Havana and also abroad. So please stay with us in a couple of minutes before we start this panel. Thank you very much. Hi, hello everyone. Thank you so much for waiting. We are connected from Havana. Thank you for joining us in this webinar right here without a blueprint. This is sponsored by Austin and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center. Thank you so much for joining us. We are on YouTube, we're on Facebook, we're on Zoom, and we're about to have a quiet, interesting discussion with several panelists from different parts of the world and of course here in Havana. When the world is being impacted by the pandemic, the priority of all countries should be to stay alive, to treat diseases, and to mitigate the economic crisis. Unfortunately, this country, the economic crisis, are quantified into a low-paid and global review in the United States of America. We have a crazy Cuba that we need time today. It's called, we would say, most faster or it's nice and that's because in Cuba, indeed, a lot of things are hotter than it should be. Putting aside the internal problems that we do have, a lot of them. In Cuba, importing equipment to improve productivity of our culture or using Zoom, these, these, and widely, apps that we're using now, online services, is hotter or impossible because of the sanctions. I have lived my entire life over the low-paid, I've been paid them up in the context of timing of the sanctions, and it is safe to say that looking has severely impacted not only my life and the lives of a lot of Cuba's, but it has been even harder on those who are really impugnating people than you would in this case. And this is why Oxford has commissioned these four right-wing low-paid documents that shows how the US policies cost real damages that obstructs the ability of human citizens to access basic products and prevent them from enjoying basic hero rights. And we're honored to have several panelists who will be able to explain this and we'll listen to them first and after once we'll have time for your questions. So please stay with us, I'll play some music for soon because we will have, we will read some of your questions and our panelists will answer them. We thank the presence of a really great big camera now of this, so you can see the panel that we have here in Havana. We welcome Elena Venditti, she's the opportunity in Cuba to present to the main arguments of this report. We have online from the US Elena Shobolski, she's a writer and a social activist with a very peculiar and interesting relation with Cuba. Thank you so much Elena for joining us for waiting. And also here from Havana, we are thanking the presence of Elena, she's the CEO of All Wives, a private company that provides audience management at foreign financial services. And we also thank Reverend Issa Tama, you are going to be calling from Issa Tama, thank you so much for being here as well, Pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Los Palos in the Western province of Miami, to the East of Havana. Thank you all for being here, thank you guys for being online, staying around and spending with your comments, each share is linked to the friends that you might be interested in this conversation. We need to listen now to what Elena has finished, she's been here several years, she knows Cuba well, and she will be training White Oxmo in the organization of Cuba, essentially in Cuba, deciding to commission this report, why Elena, why now, and why in particular are differentiating the importance of women and unworldlers. Thank you so much, thank you for the introduction and thank you everyone for being part of this space, for the meeting this year, which is exactly, the question is why, but it's very important to say that it's not the first time without some sense in the environment, in the location. This is the first time we are raising a report, because we believe it's very urgent to expose the human dimension, the human face of the impacts of these sandwichments against Cuba, who is actually affected by the blockade, is the people, is more than 11,000, 11 million people in the country. So, we have, we have commissioned this report to expose how, through testimonies, through the actual testimony of people, mostly women, these sanctions are affecting the daily life of women mostly, but on the people, on the Cuban population in general, by coercive, you may not know, sanctions that is affecting the country in about six decades. But again, why not from now? Optimists present in the countries is about half of these six decades, six, 27 years. So, during these 27 years, we've been able to work closely with the multiple actors, different actors, close to people, the communities, and doing so, we've been able to witness on how they locate and the environment is actually affecting the opportunities for development of people projects and women projects. As a development organization working to end injustice and poverty, we can actually say that almost 60 years, of course, if you do it on the major, have impacted in the opportunities that Cuban people have to achieve their own goals, to realize their own projects. And we are asking like, what could be different from the lives of these more than 11 million people without the limitation and the impact of this restriction? And even more for international organization, we have realized in the last year, and even more than a year, how the digital platform has been crucial for exchanges, for, you know, increasing ownologies and so on. And we know we actually have some millions of delays in our, in our event today, because we know how difficult or even impossible it is for people to access to these digital platforms. And again, as a right-based organization committed to fighting inequality and promoting gender justice, we are working in Cuba as one with that national and local organization to close the gender gap. Broadly speaking, and at international level, global level, we believe that to build a just society, women, every women in birth, have to have the possibility to fully self-determinate their lives in their communities. In order to address these, in order to really achieve a just society where women and girls can fully self-determinate its own decisions and its own life, we need to recognize the problem. We need to identify what policies, but also practices, are restricting and limiting their potentials. And this is one here, saying that the blockade is reinforcing the patriarchal system. This is affecting mostly women in this context, in the human context. Why? Because it doesn't recognize the different needs, the different potentials in their communities and their autonomy. So we are committed, even in the program in Cuba, for an empowerment, a greater empowerment of Cuban women is a central core of our activities, projects and programs. Together with other partners here, we say it in Spanish, that it means that the transformative leadership of women, we do believe that without these obstacles that the blockade imposes them, they could have more opportunities to achieve this leadership, this transformative leadership and this is one of their full enjoyment of their lives. So we have also another aspect that may often, let's say, able to raise this issue and to release this report, to make everyone more aware of the kind of impact that these almost six years of blockade is causing for the Cuban population. Outside of Cuba also works for the humanitarian responses. And amongst others, like the impact of climate change, Europeans, it was not like a couple of years ago, we are committed and we've seen some more than one year of support in Cuba, in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. So even in this case, we've been witness on how the U.S. environment is limiting the access to poor Chinese needed inputs, medicines, technologies to fully respond to these horrible diseases that have impacted the global level and to protect lives, which has been the core strategy for the Cuban response to the pandemic. Oxxon, broadly, at global level, is calling for people, vaccine that is free and accessible as soon as possible everywhere to everyone. We know that Cuba is about 25 different vaccine candidates, two of which are at the latest stages of trials. So how embargo, even in this condition, in this context, is in obstacle to the Cuban response to this pandemic and even to the Cuban development of these candidates. So we see how these multiple challenges that Cuba has to face are not only due to the commercial limitation and restriction with the U.S. because the locale has an extra territorial nature, which limited the possibility of Cuba to even purchase these basic needs and these equipment from other countries and other suppliers. And it's not affecting on Cuba, it's affecting the organization, the international organization as Oxxon is planning to support these responses because of financial restrictions and also because of the limited identification of certain suppliers. Anyway, we really believe that now, in the context of the global pandemic, it's needed a huge advantage to normalize the relations between the U.S. and Cuba and immediately suspend those measures of the locale that these are impeding the timely acquisition of any material that is actually holding the possibility of Cuba to have a massive vaccination campaign. I want to say the words that has been raised in the poll of our reports because they really got the essence of this report. How the simplistic understanding of the Cuban reality are actually limiting the Cuban people in exercising their rights and realizing their dreams. The report wants and aims to amplify the voices of Cuban people, Cuban women for demanding, for the works we like, particularly. And you will see in the report that we have several testimonies, we have several testimonies here, we have as well, that will share with us really how in the daily life of women and men in Cuba that the locale is limiting their opportunities. So, Outcoming has accompanied the Cuban people since 1993, in order to support their initiatives, to boost their core and more resilient and more inclusive in just society. For this, we really believe that it's important to recognize and address the economic inequalities and also those inequalities that could emerge as a consequence of the current transformation that are coming here for the new constitution, including in 2019, that is already enforced. So, we understood the need to continue promoting and reorienting local potential towards a new and more dynamic economic activities, such as non agitator cooperatives and small and medium enterprises. Cuba is leading the deepest economic crisis from the last 30 years. So, we do believe that these variables are lifting the locale and these sanctions, because it will directly benefit the individual, force their domestic socioeconomic changes that are already on the way, as we were saying, to increase economic opportunities for women and to multiply the possibility of a participatory citizenship in a constructive dialogue. So, Outcoming co-op on the UN member states, because for example, in a few weeks on the 23rd June, on the 23rd June, we will see the resolution against the locale of Cuba at the UN General Assembly. We call for all UN members to support this resolution as well. As well as listening to these testimonies that are not only from Havana, we thank all the partners that have supported the development and the elaboration of this report, because they cover all sectors, education, academic, the health sector, because there are so many different reasons to advocate for between the US locale, particularly in the context of a global pandemic, when avoiding a deeper economic crisis and protecting people is the most urgent issue, and is a shared responsibility. So, I'm very happy we'll have the opportunity today to hear from all of us and from who has and who had the direct experience on what we have been able to show and share in the future. Thank you, Elena. So, we think that we have now the opportunity of seeing a video about how will women leave the market? Let's listen to it. I'm going to put a hose, put a piece of cocktail, a piece of ice, I'm going to put it back together, and even look at the flow of water they have. Agriculture has a continuous deterioration and together with it, even, a deterioration of the environment. It is one of the sectors most affected by the blockade. Commercializing with Latin American countries is such a close market, it makes practically impossible for us, due to the extraterritorial characteristic that it has the blockade. If there is no blockade, the productivity index and the augmented income index are blocked. The economy not only affects the national level, it affects the personal level of each of the houses where we live. I am 31 years old and 60 years ago we lived under the injustices, the laws that impose a blockade that tries to official it. We think that those of you who are blind, we are, you know, in the way we are, try to live without the remaining commission by outside. Thank you, Elena, for your initial words of the report. The report, by the way, is available online, you can download it in Spanish and English, if you want to read it, or if you are a journalist and you want to cover. At the beginning of that, that you're listening to is that Mary Havana, so you might be listening to some background noise with excuses of all that. Also, I forget to mention why these webinars are in English. As you know, the US sanctions on Cuba are codified into law in the United States. Our purpose is to tell the story of how the sanctions are laid by ordinary immigrants to the American people that hasn't had the opportunity of understanding and seeing by themselves why this is a policy that doesn't only or doesn't only affect the human government as a Incinerity from some voice in the United States and why these people, and that's why this webinar is in English. Although we do have translation and you can change the Spanish video if you're so, I didn't thank you for staying with us. Also thanking all the organizations that made this possible, this sort of technological enterprise and failure in this country is extremely difficult, so we thank all the people that has worked so intensely for several days to make this happen, so we can bring this story of tool with data and voices in this report to all of you who are back here in Cuba. Elena Shulofi, thank you so much for staying with us. Elena has a tremendously interesting story with Cuba. She came to this country in 1972 as part of a work we made and then she was thrown back in the 90s and she worked in the front line of the age and epidemic in this country. She wrote a book on Cuba, a beautiful book on Cuba called Waking in Havana and she understands the story of ordinary humans, specifically healthcare workers who are the only living in the context of sanctions and how these impacts how they work. Thank you again for joining us. You are a quite interesting witness of how the blowing is seen in Cuba. How have you seen the blowing affect both your patients while you work in Cuba and caregivers? And in particular, have you seen women particularly affected, differentiated, even differentiated? Margo, thank you for being here. Thank you so much for inviting me to participate in this really important event and thanks to Oxfam, I think by producing this report you've given us a really valuable tool in our struggle to blockade against Cuba once and for all. So in 1996, I lived with a Cuban family in Havana and I was working in the aid sanatorium on the outskirts of the city. And that was a time when Cuba was in a severe economic crisis due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And at that time, the US actually tightened the blockade and made it even more difficult. And so for patients and people living with HIV AIDS in the sanatorium and those who cared for them, the blockade was really a life and death issue at that time. It was almost impossible for Cuba to get medications, even though they had made a commitment to make those medications free and universally available to all people living with HIV and AIDS. And this was due to the blockade, which effectively prohibited US pharmaceuticals and those around the world from selling these drugs to Cuba. And as an AIDS activist and a nurse at that time, we collected medications from patients in the US who had died. Their families gave us their medications and we brought them to Cuba. And that was the way that in the beginning, many Cubans with HIV and AIDS were able to survive the epidemic. In this moment, Cuba has biotech industry has developed so rapidly and is able to produce the medications on the island. But it is still very difficult to obtain the raw materials that are needed because the trading partners are so distant and the expense is so great. So although Cuba makes these medications available freely as part of their universal healthcare system, there are still many patients who are only who are not able to obtain the most advanced newest generation of medications and this greatly affects their care and their treatment and their life. My dear friend Maria Julia Fernandez, who was a founder of the AIDS prevention group at the sanatorium that does prevention work around the island, was one of Cuba's first AIDS patients and one of the first residents in the sanatorium. And she was a fierce advocate for the rights of the patients there and was very responsible I think and made a huge contribution to the evolution of Cuba's AIDS program to be what it is today, which is the sanatoriums exist as a place for education and to learn how to live with the disease, but the primary care doctors throughout the island are delivering the care. Unfortunately, after decades of living with HIV and being cared for despite great hardships, she got ovarian cancer and died in 2015 and during that time that she was suffering with cancer, although she was receiving treatment in Cuba with chemo and radiation, she would ask me to bring things like Tylenol, antacids, nutritional supplements, things that just weren't available in Cuba. She died in 2015, as I said, and I often wonder what her life would have been without these deprivations and hardships imposed by the blockade. I also saw women in the family that I live with and that I remain very close to the intergenerational effect on women where much of the very hard work of maintaining a household falls on the abuelas who look forward to relaxing, but really can't because everybody else is working so hard just to get to work and working long days at work just to make ends meet. And so women are carrying the burden of caring for the sick, of caring for the elderly, of childcare, and of maintaining a household. And it's exhausting. And during the various moments when I've lived and worked in Cuba, I've always felt tremendous shame and really fury at this policy that the US government imposes on the island. I don't know if there's anything else that you'd like me to say about that. I would like to talk a little bit about the impact of the blockade on those of us who live in the United States, because I think sometimes we only think it affects the Cuban people, and it certainly does affect them in ways that are so... Could you please go over that idea of how you lead the sanctions from there, because obviously we only see this side of the story. And also, would you go over what do you think it needs to change in the US policy in order for Cubans to most effectively tackle and protect? Could you please address those two issues? Sure. So one of the ways that I think we don't often talk about the way the sanctions and the blockade affect those of us who live and struggle and work in the US. And in the late 2000s, I had the privilege of working with an organization called PanTech and their community partnership for health equity. And I brought a bunch of residents of Lermont Village in the South Bronx and New York City to Cuba to learn how Cuba mobilizes its population and engages communities in their own health care. And we visited family doctor programs, we visited clinics, we visited senior centers, and the residents who... This is the 10,000 residents in a public housing development in the congressional district with the lowest per capita income in the U.S. And they went to Cuba and they were absolutely astounded by what they saw there. At the Diabetes, the National Diabetes Center, for example, we learned about herboprote, which is an innovative medication that Cuba has developed and is now being used in over 250,000 cases in 20 countries are able to access this medication that Cuba has developed that prevents diabetic foot ulcers from turning into amputation. And if you spend any time in Claremont Village in the Bronx, you will see on a bus, on the street, everywhere, so many people in wheelchairs because of amputations due to diabetes. The rate of type 2 diabetes is extraordinarily high in that neighborhood. It's very hard to eat healthy food and exercise, all kinds of variants. And then people from Claremont got the shot, which included doctors from all over the world. And residents of the development said, this is amazing. Why can't we use this in Claremont? Why can't we have this in our clinics and our hospitals? This would have such an impact on the quality of life for our residents. And the only answer and the simple answer and the terrible answer is because of the blockade. So we are losing so much in the U.S. in terms of now as the pandemic is unfolding. Another example, in my immigrant community, the government agencies were completely unorganized and the response was completely inadequate. And we had to form volunteer mutual aid committees to help people get food, to help people get vaccines, to help people get tested. And at the same time, watching Cuba mobilize 28,000 medical students to go door to door and screen people to start a testing program, to develop vaccines, even though I know those as well are hampered by the blockade, was just inspiring. And we could learn so much from exchanges that no longer can happen because of the tightening of the travel restrictions. So that's one way that I feel the blockade really hurts us. And in terms of what we can do, I'm really hopeful right now because I think that in this country, in the U.S., excuse me, a conversation has been opened about health and public health and what should we expect from our public health system as never before. And so I'm hoping that that will open a way to a dialogue about how the blockade is one of the most one of the most terrible examples of how the lack of health cooperation affects us all. We need global health cooperation in this moment as never before. And I think people are starting to see that. And I think that we can use that to build a stronger movement against the blockade in the U.S. And as a nurse and as a community activist, I certainly intend to do whatever I can to contribute to that. We're seeing on a local level city councils, I think it's 14 cities now in the U.S. that have past resolutions against the blockade and calling for health cooperation since the pandemic. And I think we need to build on that. And I think we need to strengthen that. And I think we need to use the pandemic and the realization that people have come to as a result of it to really build this movement against the blockade. You mentioned the freedom to export to Cuba Act also provides an opportunity. But I think organizing on a local level, which is so strong now and it's so necessary has become almost necessary for survival in our cities will help us build that movement. So I hope that's a helpful response. Thank you so much, Elena. For your words, please stay around. We might ask some questions afterwards. And you can leave them to the other panelists. Thank you all of you who are online. We're writing your live for your questions. Thank you. All of you that are online all around the world. This webinar, we are going to listen now to the experience of a young woman, mom, the CEO of her own company, four wives. She challenges every day to have a charitable system this industry, having a private company in Cuba, inside of power, in terms of the impact of the social wives, which is the work also of another part of women is one of the countries that was founded and primed in the years of the encroachment between the Cuban government and the US government during the environmental administration. It benefit from many audiences and families that came here and four wives provided services and became known for this. Elena, thank you so much for being with us. Can you tell us a little bit about the sanctions in Cuba, limited the scope of your business? Thanks for the invitation. I think I was telling the audience that maybe the main current was my English. I haven't practiced in two years, so sorry for that. First of all, I would say that with all this to the film industry and music industry that was coming to Cuba from the US, it happened to became our main market at some point and after the first strong regulations, they started to stop coming. They had fear of legal repercussions. We lost around, I don't know, $13,000, $15,000 in business we had running. We had big bands, interesting to come to Cuba. We had started the audit negotiations with the culture ministry and everything and they stopped all the relationships when called from one day to the other. We stopped hearing from them when they didn't answer the phone. It was a really painful moment for the company. Nevertheless, I would say it was a challenge. How did you overcome that challenge? We like to see the things from the positive side and we were looking to the external market, the US market, which we still do, but we didn't look at the potential of the national market and so we turned to the national market. We started working with Cuban companies. We started working with Cuban festivals, which we do, which we did with the festival, for example, but we started working with another festival. We started working with Cuban companies and we reinvented ourselves. Is the fact that you had to learn how to make it in context different from that in which you were born as a company? To Trump's administration, Cuba has seen an opportunity for 80 different measures which have made the system such as more comprehensive and very, very broad in its scope. You've reinvented yourself, but as a Cuban woman entrepreneur who worked in Cuba, which, by the way, provides the noise of the people and so they've seen their income affected by this. How do you see, how do you leave this sort of situation in which, from a context, we, like 2015, 2016, there was a lot of hope in a lot of positive vibes that actually good memory was possible between the two countries, so much that business like yours thrived in this context. But now the situation is in words that it was before, right? In terms of how big and the ramifications of their measures, the trust administration has taken on Cuba. How is that expressed in your lay back? It's difficult, but still we are, we're happy to overcome all this challenge. And it's difficult. You need to, you cannot plan ahead in every Cuba because you don't know how it will be. That's kind of hard. Yeah, but still, you can have into, you have to take into account different scenarios and you have to play with that. It's difficult during the pandemic being a mom having to, and I'm talking for all our members, having to pay wages to people because you cannot let people down. So you have to, you have the responsibility with your workers and you still have to maintain that and support them. It's hard to get supplies to get the company running. It's hard to access the technology that sometimes you need. It's hard to connect to platforms, for instance, or one call also. So your business runs in a complex completely different from any other business or small enterprise that is in any other public order. So your context is more challenging, it's different, and it requires more serious feedbacks. I'm going to ask you, I'm going to ask you. So you are going to receive more serious feedbacks all the way. Yeah, we are. At this point, it's not a problem. I mean, we have to live like that. And now it's like, you have to deal with it. You have to deal with it. And I'm a little bit small. How does your life, your daily life, is being affected by the demi-common economic crisis, like the number of sanctions, no troubles, shortages, basically anything. How is your life in fact? It's hard to deal with it in a daily basis because you have like this, and you say, hey, everything will be okay. And you have to do this. But you have to get this at home because I have my partner's daughter. So I have to get this at home. You have to work with them there. You have to deal with all the shortness. As you said, you have to think, okay, I need to buy all the supplies today for the house or the company. I need to have a video call with some client. We need to organize the enterprise with the needs at home. What all this talk of the, that they can then be located in the country. So at the same time, I think that the experience of a lot of species experience of the opportunities that the current legal framework, the country has for some of these problems in the process of the existence of the species, like for once, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago. And this is an example of how even the individual, entrepreneur, the private worker has had to reinvent itself to be able to deal with sanctions and put on a great face, like you do every day here, and reinvent in order to do a successful business in this country. This is an example, but it is possible. But again, I'd like to go back to what Elena said at the beginning. What is, for what I used to have been prompted in a different context, or in a context in which sanctions were not reality, helping you be. And how important and relevant your words have been if you would have been born in a country something of no sort, because they are not in that country. Yeah, I think it would be amazing. I would like to see that. I would like to try it. Me too. I would like to see it. I really would like to put the adrenaline, you know, that having a lot of clients, a lot of business, a lot of things running at the same time without restriction. Thank you so much, Lillian. Stay around. We have forgetting a lot of questions and comment people watching on soon. Thank you all of you that are online. We want to thank all of you for being here. I'll just tell you a little bit about her. She graduated as a nurse first, and then she became a pastor and parent in Christmas in the presentary church of Los Alos, in the western province of Whitewater. This is to the east of Atlanta. She has a long and extensive work with low-income communities and rural areas for several years, and that's why she can bring a very interesting perspective on how these parts of the country are uniquely sometimes an irony about the sanctions. It's a very urban irony. That's why we show you this thing about rural communities. As far as your work is said, this is not your story, it's not a story of a comfortable distance. We usually live in the community in witness, yet there are people who are new to the sanctions. In their daily lives, people that you interact with, how are they affected by this policy? Can you see the repercussions for women? Hi, thank you for being around. We had trouble with our technology platforms. This is the cost of the space for a country that expands from so many apps and services online because of the example of why this country lives in a differentiated context because of the sanctions. We had online, I'm not quite sure if you're still around, Dr. Alena, a special welcome to right now I'm seeing her live. We had her as one of our panelists, we weren't clear if she was able to free us in her schedule, but if she's around, we would love to listen to her perspective as published, authorised, always international law on the impact of unilateral force and measures on different countries, not only in Cuba, but in Sweden and in certain countries of the world. Also, in Cuba, she's quoted in our report as an authorised voice on this. Is she online? We see other people that are online. Okay, so she's in another medium for the movement. This is the pandemic time, so we are still open tonight. But if she can come back later, we'll listen to her for a moment, we'll continue with the intervention, we were listening to Lisette's comment of Emmanuel Reverend Lisette. He's a caster in the Presbyterian Church in a rural community here in Havana, near Havana in a public school in the east of Havana. And we were listening to how they were able to interact with Lisette. It's effective, it's impacted in any way because of the sound. How is this related in every day's lives of the lady we interact with in your community as well? Yes, I was talking about how difficult is the diving day for people in the US, especially people who live in the countryside. My town, the small town that I live in, I also work as a master, have about 8,000 people in the population. And in the house, the women are the heads of the households. They have to manage their daily life for children, for adults, for children. It's very difficult because the access to housing, the access to the meals, you have to move to live with all these programs. I say that not only because the economic and financial problems here in Cuba is everybody known, not only for the pandemic this time, but also for the many children who have been living in the countryside for many years. So I think that if you live as a people family now and you see how difficult it is for them to apply because for this sanction, you also know that it's not only because of the problem, but for the sanction that the US government has put in place. There are people that say that this policy of sanctions, and this is a comment that we see from different voices. Essentially, I think that if the world was published on this week or Tuesday, the press conference in the human world was published, and then there's this narrative that's been repeating over the years that the purpose of the voting is to force a change in the political system in Cuba to force a change it doesn't matter in the way the lives of thousands of people are limited, are affected, including children living in these communities, people that need some medicine or technology to survive, and this is not even possible because of the sanctions. So I think it's the will of a group of a very powerful group of people trying to impose quite this proportionate power on another country just to pursue a particular political change. If in the way the lives of human beings are affected, that doesn't seem to be a problem. Your group of family, human, love, human, social work, human awareness to your community, how do you see this? I think that in that just effect to hurting or affecting the people because you think that is the way to have the inclusion of a better life. No matter if you are against or in favor of the government, the one against the human that now is affected because of this purpose. When you saw the people in the struggle, people have to live every day and as a person of faith, we believe in God, in God's gift of the life. So depending on the life it means that you have the opportunity to live the way that you decide to live. So how you can tell me that you want to help me because it's better for me when you decide to permit or affect me in many ways. It's impossible to see that this is the way to help a country or whatever you want to do. So I can believe that someone think as a human being that when you decide for better people is because you want to live this people's better life. So it's true that we have many things to fix but I think that we have to do as a human people. No one can tell us how we can love. It's true that we have many privilege here, many ways to do the thing better but in addition you're going to give more problems, your damage is crazy. I think that for me and for the church that has to try to support the people in all these problems that we have now, it's too strong to think that someone might do people some good in this way. So just see the people, the children, the women, the elderly, the people who have special needs. How to contain this just the way we have because in the future they'll become better. It's impossible to see that this is the best possible. Thank you so much Reverend. We are just coming to the end of this webinar in which we can listen to the voices of three women, four women, talking about how the sanctions impact the lives of Cubans in general but how the sanctions do have a differentiated impact on the form of groups of specifically women. The report, The Right to Leave Without a Blocking, is composed by Hans von Neugendal in an English language from Hans von Cuba one time. And I just want to, before saying goodbye, I just want to give you my personal experience of how as a young woman that chooses to live in Cuba in terms of condemning sanctions in economic crisis all at once again. My internal life has been combined by the needs of the environment. But now I would like to know how these, you know, are measures that has marked my life are illegal, are misuse, and are violating the international law. I have been reported now that two more parties that we've been waiting for are now connected. I mean, so are they around? We've been waiting for Reverend Hugh Winkler from the United States and Alina Duham, the Special Director of the Unilateral Courts and Pressures. We've been waiting for both of them. I don't know if they're around. So I at least said I can now we are connected with Hugh Winkler. Thank you so much for being here with us. It's great that you're around. Reverend Winkler is the President and General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States. He has been quite vocal on expressing his criticism, his rejection to the policy of aggression and hostility to the United States. As a matter of fact, he said, I let it to me as a customer of international velocity, jet to the inclusion of Cuba in the special, but the question is of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Reverend, again, thank you for being with us. What has led you on the National Council of the Churches to call for this change in the US policy? What part of the sanctions have you and your colleagues seen that most concern you? Thank you. Thank you for Oxfam for this report. The National Council of Churches in the USA has called for the removal of the blockade since 1968 and we are continuing to push the US government to move forward, to reverse the Trump policies so that we can resume the process that took place under President Obama to move toward normalization of relations. This has been a long, difficult, frustrating struggle over these many years. We have always remained connected to the Cuban Council of Churches. We've worked together to return, for example, Elyon Gonzalez to his family in Cuba. We have worked for the release of the Cuban Five and we have celebrated the reopening of the embassy in Cuba. We have been grateful that the Cuban government has been restrained in their response to Trump and have refused to engage in a war of words with Trump. I do believe that the Biden administration will resume and perhaps even go beyond what President Obama has done, but to end the blockade that will require a vote in the US Congress and that will be much more difficult to achieve. But we're grateful for the partners that we have here in the United States and in Cuba as we try to really have normal relations between our two countries. This is long overdue. Were you able to hear me all right? Yes, we heard you. Thank you so much. I wanted to do a follow-up, Reverend. What do you think the context is different now in terms of administration because 240 measures are more probably part of the count because it was over one measure a week? The context is now, but what do you think is changing the US policy to help Cuba tackle this pandemic in a more normal condition and not on assumptions that have only a political purpose? Well, of course, we need to reopen travel between the two countries. We need to remove the barriers in terms of money going from Cuban families in the US, back to Cuba. We need for tourism to resume from the United States. Actually, the tourism opens the eyes of many Americans to the reality of Cuba and they come home with a positive view of Cuba. The Obama policies were very popular in the United States. What I told the State Department is that even if President Biden were to follow Trump's policies, the people who support Trump will never support Biden. It will be more popular for President Biden to go back to the Obama policies and hopefully beyond them. We want medical and other supplies to go to Cuba. We want there to be support for the Cuban medical personnel who work around the world. And as I said, the most difficult part of this process will be a vote in Congress to end the blockade. Right now, we have a bitterly divided country. As you know, just four months ago, there was an attempt to have a coup d'etat in the United States. So we are still attempting to bring our country together. So our challenge is not from the people of Cuba or the government of Cuba. It's from inside our own country. Is that helpful? Maybe our link has frozen again. Were you able to hear me all right? Okay. We are having an unstable internet connection, but we did listen to you. And I think it's an extremely interesting point of view, what you mentioned about how Biden is still upholding Trump's policies by not changing and what's the impact that this would have in his circumstances. We would like to give the floor now, and thank you for joining us, Special Vecontel on Unilateral Courses and Measures from the UN Human Rights Council. Thank you, Dr. Alejandro, for being here with us and feeding us in your illegal and misuse in the international community. Good afternoon. So good morning for you. Unfortunately, I haven't heard the question. As far as the connection was not stable again. I can review the question. Thank you again for being with us. I don't know if you listen to that. We are very happy to have you here with us. And we were talking about how important it is to understand why unilateral sanctions are illegal and misused in the international community. And we wanted your perspective as an expert and an authorized voice of these that have witness and research on this in so many countries. Why are unilateral sanctions illegal and misuse in the international community? Thank you very much for the question. And first of all, I would like to thank you for organizing this event. I was co-listening when the connection was stable from my side as well during the whole event. And upon my opinion, I believe that I need to congratulate you with having a wonderful webinar when people are able to share not only the legalistic perspectives, but the real life stories. And I will probably start from the point that at the Special Rapporteur, there is a huge need for the world community to know and to listen to real life stories. Because from my perspective, as a Special Rapporteur, after participating in a number of the political events, like speaking to the Human Rights Council, to UN General Assembly and even the UN Security Council, the main request usually comes from the side of sanctioning states saying that you can never prove and you have no evidences that unilateral sanctions have negative humanitarian impact. And this part of the story is usually hidden from those who impose sanctions. And that's why it's necessary to collect this information to show up this information. Then when I come back to your question, I need to mention first of all that today, unfortunately, the scope of unilateral sanctions is expanding enormously. We are not speaking only about the traditional style, the economic or trade embargoes. The situation is even more complex now. Unilateral sanctions are presented in the style like something tiny, very targeted, being imposed by good guys with the purpose of common goods over the bad guys. And unfortunately, this presumption is very widespread. And that's why again, real life stories and real facts are very important to explain what exactly is happening and what exactly is the legal status and humanitarian impact of unilateral sanctions. I'm very happy that you were asking the question about the legality of unilateral sanctions, because being beside the special rapporteur, the university professor, I need to mention that there are very few, if any, academic works which try to provide any legal assessment of unilateral sanctions at all. You can find thousands of works devoted to the qualification of humanitarian impact assessment of UN Security Council sanctions. You may find thousands of works which are devoted to the point how to increase effectiveness of the US or European Union sanctions, but you can hardly find any academic work which looks to provide a legal qualification of application of unilateral sanctions. There are very few ones. And before, for example, my report to the Human Rights Council this year is devoted exactly to identification, what unilateral sanctions are, what is the difference between terms which are used to speak about unilateral sanctions, security measures, emergency measures, struggling against state-sponsored terrorism, as it is the recent rhetoric towards Cuba as well, or any other types of measures. And to provide a general legal qualifications, what measures can be taken unilaterally by states and regional organizations or cannot. So the main scheme is pretty simple. So the first point is that states generally speaking can take certain unilateral measures if they are in conformity with international law. So states are free to choose whether they want to cooperate or do not want to cooperate with another state, whether they want to have diplomatic relation or not to have, or for example if they want to conclude an agreement or they do not want to conclude the agreement. But if, for example, the international agreement is in force, a state can't quit fulfilling it today. There shall be an agreement regulated process of withdrawal from the international agreement which will last at least one year, for one year. Therefore, it's a slow process. It's very well regulated process. It can't be like in one clap today or tomorrow. The second point is that states also can take so-called countermeasures, but these countermeasures can only be taken in response to violation of international obligation by another state by a directly injured state. So if there was an international agreement between states and it's violated by one party of the agreement and it affects rights of another party, these directly injured state can react, can apply countermeasures, but they shall be proportionate and they shall never affect human rights. Even in these situations, when, for example, there is a possibility to apply so-called collective countermeasures, these are very rare situations. They can only be used, for example, in the situation of the act of aggression or genocide or ethnic cleansing, for example. In this case, any state around the world can use countermeasures. These measures can never involve the use of force, can never involve violations of fundamental human rights or humanitarian law, which is definitely not the case when we speak about application of unilateral sanctions today, including this style, which is used when we speak about Cuba. So, therefore, theoretically, naturally, states always try to influence each other in the international relations. But what they can do shall only be done in accordance with international law. And when we speak, for example, about application of economic measures, there was an attempt to start a case in the WTO dispute settlement bordered by the European Union against the United States sanctions already in the middle of 1990s. So, they finally came to the agreement how to eliminate the negative impact over the businesses of the European Union and the case was withdrawn. But in any specific case, when we speak about economic measures, the full scope of international obligations shall be observed, none of them can be violated, and human rights shall never be affected. That's a very interesting point of view, Mr. Hanh. I want to have a follow-up. In the case of Cuba, how does the U.S. unilateral sanctions impact Cubans and specifically vulnerable people? In your experience, what's your insight on this? Unfortunately, when one speaks about the application of unilateral sanctions against the country as a whole or against the specific sectors of the economy or lots of businesses in the country, the impact of unilateral sanctions is usually very comprehensive. First of all, the economy of the targeted society is affected a lot, and that basically means that we speak not only about economy as such, but we speak about all the people dependent or involved into that economy. That means the unemployment rate rises, it means that salaries are lower, that means that the poverty rate is rising again. We speak about the lower possibilities of the targeted societies, including Cuba, to have the possibility to buy the vital goods like medicine, medical equipment. At the very beginning of the pandemic, there were several very cases to which I reacted. I forwarded a communication toward the United States, and the very first one was about the impossibility of these humanitarian organizations to deliver humanitarian aid already bought. That was a medical equipment and protective kits. To deliver these protective kits and medical equipment to Cuba because it was blocked, and the second case was about the impossibility of the owner of Ali Express to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba in the course of the pandemic as well. Unfortunately, I received no response from the United States, but from the general perspective. Medicine, education, and all developmental projects are the areas which are affected the most and which are affected the first. Naturally, people who are vulnerable, and in this case, I'm speaking about children, which have problems with visiting schools because some of them start to work, which have problems to get access to internet, which have problems of getting normal nutrition because the parents do not get sufficient money. We speak about the health sector, and as a result, people who suffer from serious or chronic diseases are suffering a lot. The rare cases cited about situations of people with oncology, with diabetes, and so forth. These people are affected a lot. Female are affected a lot as well because, unfortunately, this is the group which loses money. First of all, and more unfortunately, when it comes to other countries, I'm not speaking about Cuba right now, there is an increasing rate of crimes committed against women through involvement into prostitution or human trafficking or any other sorts of criminal activity as well. Thank you so much, Dr. Duane. It's been a pleasure to listen to you, to have your voice, your experience, and your extensive investigation research on these topics. We're going to move now to some questions that we've been receiving online. One person that is on our show soon was asking a question on microlending and how the Cuban government and the agriculture institutions like the ministry deals with the rural communities and specifically women that live in rural communities. And microlending is a reality, it's a possibility in this country. Elena, you've talked to some of these authorities in several occasions, Oksman, by the way I didn't say this at the beginning. Oksman is not commissioning and publishing this report from the distance, from a conformed distance. Oksman has been in Cuba for many years working with civil society organizations as well as institutions accompanying people and knows the situation in this country and the many challenges not only to the sanction of force, but the challenges that this society deals with every day. In the case of this question of microlending and criminal women and women, what's your experience with that, with the human voice? Well, I will be brief because we have a very tight schedule for everyone that is participating, but I think it's a very important question and thanks for raising it. As Cristina was just mentioning, Oksman has been working for several years on the ground, working with charities and women and people, especially rural areas. But aside on the ground work, we have been working with the ministry, the ministry of agriculture, supporting the development of the gender strategy as well as supporting the development of the gender strategy of those organizations that are related to the minister of agriculture. And this is a tool in order to support women and there is a political support in advancing the active participation of women in the human and in agriculture sector. Beside that from a legal point of view, we have to recognize that there is the 311 decree that is actually promoting access to land in Osoford and has a specific focus in supporting women access to the land. So I think these are the two main tools, the gender strategy at the ministry of agriculture and within the organization, the civil society organization that are actually working on the ground with women and families and communities in developing the sector, but as well from the legal point of view, there is this specific decree that is supporting and increasing, facilitating the increasing access of women to land as well. We do have time for the last question that he probably said and I was answering. This is a question that comes from, I think if we don't mind, on behalf of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization passes to his parents, thank you for joining us. They have this question, the Federation of Human Women is a major participant in the United Nations commission on the status of women. How do you think the US locate of Cuba will interfere and impact the ability of human women to meet the highly critical 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals outlined specifically in section 12, which states for the realization of those goals must take into consideration the different national realities. I think that sometimes we talk about how affecting a different kind of good women should be. Especially with that, I think that all the programs participate in all the expression of what the Cuba can be or can share with other people. Is this part of the affecting the ways that the human women can develop themselves as a human being or as a human? We have experienced in many different ways to help the development of the human in Cuba. It's possible that we can share with the people how in the world, for example, or how it's possible that we can have a history of development right for human in Cuba and it's possible to share this experience with other people, other women around the world, for example. Not only from the Federation of Human Rights or other organizations, also the Church, the Women's Organization, the Women's Administration, or other groups in the society in Cuba. How it's possible that you don't limit the opportunity to the human to share what this means and also to receive the experience of what it was in other countries. Thank you so much. You said so we are coming to an end of this webinar, right to leave without relocate. We've been having in three different parts of the world. We have panelists here in Ghana and also we thank the presence of Elena Sholzky, Reverend Jim Winter, and also Dr. Elena Duman, the Special Operator of the Unilateral Force of Equations, who joined us on this one. We have here in this webinar voices that support why this report commissioned by Oxford is so important. The voice of a private and important woman here in Ghana, Reverend, working in broad communities and people who understand how harmful these sanctions are for curing people from voices and people that understand these policies and have seen the impact for years. My entire life has been multiplied by the limits of these developing influences. My life, my parents' life, and now my mother's life as well. It's something that I think of every time I have to look for my family or every time I have to get medicines for my role of my parents. The economic implications of the sanctions are so broad and non-production industry has more enterprise as being able to assist normally in this country. Of course, this holds up any economic development and of course hinders the empowerment of women that starts with economic autonomy and essential freedom to actually be able to challenge effectively a maturity system in which we live. My life as a mom, as a caregiver, is of course harder because of the sanctions. It makes my professional self less prone to success and to economic independence and that's why it is safe to say that my human rights to human living in Cuba are limited because of the sanctions. I just wanted to leave you with a final idea. The country from where I'm talking to you from is full of potential. However, when you live on their siege and the sanctions are so broad and so extraterritorial and you actually live in a besieged square, you barely expect survival. You demand less from yourself and any risk or endeavor that you want to take to change the reform of your reality is limited by the fact that you're constantly watched by a very powerful body that is just watching you so you've played it all and it's working hard for you to play. That's why the U.S. administration has created such a hostile environment that even the evolution of political biology in this country has been hindered by the sanctions. I've been lucky enough to witness and cover as a journalist the re-approachment between the two governments and more importantly the re-approachment between the two people and that's why I can assure you that the benefits of being together, of having riches, of having the respect for the benefits are mutual, are endless. Thank you so much for being around.