Cuba Participates in World Youth Festival

Meyvis Estévez Echeverría, first secretary of the National Committee of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), participated this Tuesday in the World Youth Festival in Yekaterinburg, Russia, where she presented Cuba's vision on social justice, sovereignty, and youth leadership.

The leader stated on her Facebook profile that the current generations of young people constitute the present and future of their countries, and in Cuba they are subjects of rights and strategic protagonists of national development.

Estévez Echeverría explained that public policies toward youth sectors are conceived collectively, with active participation from the very process of their construction.

She denounced that the tightening of the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, intensified since January with an energy siege, causes shortages of essential goods and services, especially affecting children and young people.

She reported that the life expectancy of children with cancer dropped from 85 to 65 percent, and the infant mortality rate rose from 4.4 per thousand births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025.

She added that of the 395 medications produced in Cuba, 300 are in short supply due to difficulties in accessing raw materials, which affects care for patients with chronic diseases.

The leader described as grotesque that more than seven thousand containers with food and medicines remain stranded in different countries due to the extraterritorial effects of the blockade.

She underscored that the main challenge for Cuban youth is to overcome the blockade with innovation, entrepreneurship, science, and community leadership, and highlighted that on September 1 all schools opened their doors for the new school year.

In her remarks, she proposed strengthening international cooperation in five areas: education and training; science and innovation; community volunteering; youth communication; and international solidarity, with concrete projects and permanent networks.

The first secretary of the UJC thanked the Festival for dedicating a mural exhibition to the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, in the year of his centennial, and affirmed that Cuban youth keep his legacy alive.

She concluded that Cuba will not be bowed and counts on its youth to defend the dignity and the right of peoples to decide their own destiny.