POSITION PAPER

Committee: SOCHUM
Country: The Republic of Cuba
Agenda: Famines

I. OVERVIEW OF THE ISSUE

The Federal Republic of Cuba believes that a famine can be defined as the
catastrophic disruption of the social, economic, and institutional systems that
provide for food production, distribution, and consumption. Famines not only kill
masses of people, they also destroy livestock, which people depend upon as food
and for their livelihood, extending the impact.
Famines also have a very strong impact on demographics. Mortality is concentrated
among children and the elderly. A consistent demographic fact is that in all recorded
famines, male mortality exceeds female. Possible reasons for this include greater
female resilience under the pressure of malnutrition, and that women are more
skilled at gathering and processing wild foods and other fallback famine foods.
Famines therefore leave the reproductive core of a populationadult womenless
affected compared to other population categories, and post-famine periods are
often characterized a "rebound" with increased births. Even though famines reduce
the size of the population significantly, in fact even the most severe famines have
rarely dented population growth for more than a few years. The mortality in China in
19581961, Bengal in 1943, and Ethiopia in 19831985 was all made up by a
growing population in just a few years. Of greater long-term demographic impact is
emigration: Ireland was chiefly depopulated after the famine of the 1940s by waves
of emigration.
It has been observed that periods of extensive famine can lead to a reduction in the
number of reported female children in some cultures. Demographers and historians
have debated the causes of this trend and some believe that parents deliberately
select male children, through the process of infanticide, as they are perceived as
being more valuable to society. Others have suggested that biological processes
may be at work.

II. POSITION OF CUBA

The loss of Soviet subsidies brought famine to Cuba in the early 1990s. The regime
did not accept donations of food, medicines and money from the US until 1993.
Malnutrition created epidemics, but it had positive effects too. The Special Period
can be best described as "the first, and probably the only, natural experiment, born
of unfortunate circumstances, where large effects on diabetes, cardiovascular
disease and all-cause mortality have been related to sustained population-wide
weight loss as a result of increased physical activity and reduced caloric intake".
In 2007, The Republic of Cuba announced that it has undertaken computerizing and
creating national networks in Blood Banks, Nephrology and Medical Images. Cuba is
the second country in the world with such a product, only preceded by France. Cuba
is preparing a Computerized Health Register, Hospital Management System, Primary
Health Care, Academic Affairs, Medical Genetic Projects, Neurosciences, and
Educational Software. The aim is to maintain quality health service free for the
Cuban people, increase exchange among experts and boost research-development
projects. An important link in wiring process is to guarantee access to Cuba's Data
Transmission Network and Health Website (INFOMED) to all units and workers of the
national health system

III. PROPOSALS

The 21st Century is the first time in human history that we have the capacity to
eradicate famine. To do so, we must address the underlying problems:

Production solutions: We must accelerate investment in African food production.

There are regions in Africa we know have always faced chronic food shortages,
where even small blips in harvests can have terrible consequences. We need more
support for small-holder farmers and pastoralists (e.g. hardier crops, cheaper inputs,
disaster risk management).

Access solutions: We must alleviate rural African poverty. More aid and budgetary
investment into physical infrastructure (roads, communications etc.) and allowing

public intervention to correct market failures until markets are stronger (e.g. grain
reserves to stop price volatility).

Response solutions: We need to move away from discretionary assistance to

guaranteed social protection e.g. such as social assistance to the poor households
to access food throughout the year and insurances, so that support can be triggered
automatically in times of crisis. In some contexts cash transfers can be more
appropriate than food aid, where availability of food is not a problem.

Emergency aid is vital right now, but we also need to ask why this has happened,
and how we can stop it ever happening again. The warning signs have been seen
for months, and the world has been slow to act. Much greater long-term investment
is needed in food production and basic development to help people cope with poor
rains and ensure that this is the last famine in the region.