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The program of the seminar included a comprehensive review of the human rights situation in Cuba and the comments Cuba received during its last review before the UN Human Rights Council.
The seminar was held by Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada (Havana, 1975). Fernández Estrada holds a PhD in Juridical Sciences (2005), licentiate degrees in Law (1998) and History (2003), all from the University of Havana. He is a tenured professor since 2013 and has taught at the Faculty of Law of the University of Havana and at the Center for Public Administration Studies, from 1999 to 2016. Since 2016, he has also been a columnist for the independent media outlets On Cuba and El Toque. He has lectured at universities in Cuba, Mexico, Guatemala, Argentina, the United States, Spain and Italy and as visiting professor at the universities of Sassari and Padua, Italy. His publications comprise articles, books and book chapters on law, politics, and history of law, which have been published in Cuba and abroad. His undergraduate and graduate courses focussed on Roman Law, Theory of the State and Law, Philosophy of Law, History of the State and Law, Constitutional Law and Public Speaking. Fernández Estrada is a former Fellow of the Harvard University Scholars at Risk Program from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
In the first session on Tuesday, July 23, the class’ content parted on Cuba’s national report in the most recent UPR and inquired about Cuba’s arguments to justify the human rights situation in the country. The real situation of economic, social and cultural rights in Cuba as well as of civil and political rights was addressed, using official data provided by Cuba's ONEI (National Office of Statistics and Information) to illustrate the situation of public health and education, as well as housing, employment, social security and social assistance, access to drinking water, electricity and food. Regarding the situation of civil and political rights, relevant results of reports and studies carried out by Cuban civil society organizations on freedom of expression, press, assembly, demonstration, creed and association were cited. Finally, Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada spoke about new Cuban regulations, complementary to the 2019 Constitution, and demonstrated how these underline the vulnerable situation of civil and political rights in Cuba before he addressed the situation of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Cuba.
The second session, held on Wednesday, July 24, analyzed the following topics: The recommendations of various countries to Cuba in the most recent UPR and Cuba's response to these recommendations; and the persistence of the official Cuban argument that it is studying the conditions and possibilities of ratification of the International Covenants on Human Rights. Further, the partial success of Cuban diplomacy on human rights in relation to the UPR was analyzed, as well as the weakening of the argument of the exceptional situations in which Cuba finds itself, caused by the blockade-embargo, the aftermath of the covid 19 pandemic, the doctrine of the besieged square, the dispute with the government of the United States, as a justification for the hardening of internal policies; and the alleged cultural struggle against Cuba as a justification for the repression of the independent press and the internal opposition. Also, Cuba's official response to the social protests of July 2021 was addressed, which has had minor replications in the following years. Some timely questions were posed: why wasn’t there included an Ombudsman’s Office, an independent Constitutional Court or a political body specialized in constitutional control in the Cuban 2019 Constitution nor in any complementary law an Ombudsman's Office? Why does the Cuban process of Amparo to human rights leave so little room for maneuver to the Chambers in charge of these processes? Why doesn’t Cuba discuss or approve any law on municipalities, citizenship, companies, the rights of assembly and demonstration? Why does neither the 2019 Constitution nor any complementary law include a non-discrimination precept for having a different political ideology?
Finally, the third and last session, held on Thursday, July 25, dealt with the following topics: Cuba and the International Covenants on Human Rights. What are the real reasons why Cuba does not ratify the Covenants? Insurmountable contradictions between the Cuban political and normative system and the content of the International Covenants on Human Rights. The political culture on human rights in Cuba. Civic, political and legal education on human rights in Cuba. Analysis of how human rights continue to be tabooed in Cuban daily life and in the relationship between citizenship and political power. Human rights, civil society, exile, opposition, dissidence, as the core of the forbidden concepts of real Cuban socialism. Analysis of the Cuban constitutional design and its relationship with the rest of the Cuban normative system and the place of the political system within that constitutional design, in order to glimpse the essence of Cuban authoritarianism. Analysis of the real impossibility for human rights, especially civil and political rights, but as it was later demonstrated, also economic, social and cultural rights, to be realized in a social, institutional and legal-political environment, whose objective is not the search for development and social welfare but the survival of a political order that depends on the absence of human rights, the rule of law, political pluralism, the normal functioning of a republic, constitutional supremacy, political alternation and democracy.
