The President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, together with high authorities of the Cuban government and the National Assembly of Popular Power attended the official presentation of the Cuban Observatory on Gender Equality (OCIG).
The OCIG constitutes a tool aimed at collecting, processing and making visible indicators, from a gender and rights perspective, related to the situation and position of women and men in Cuban society. The construction of the OCIG and the methodological and informative updating is the responsibility of the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) and the Federation of Cuban Women, who have worked in coordination and coordination to specify its design and implementation.
During his speech, the Head of State highlighted that, in addition to being a robust and modern instrument, the Observatory will contribute to improving the results of public policies, to account for the gender gaps that persist and to analyze their associated factors, to identify the paths to its transformation.
Ana Güezmes, Director of the DAG, pointed out in her greeting that “it is very good news for Cuba and for the region that the country has the OCIG to follow up on the Plan for the Advancement of Women (PAM) and to make visible the progress and pending challenges to achieve gender equality”.
The ECLAC representative stated that the implementation of the Observatory of Cuba on Gender Equality responds to the commitments signed in the Regional Gender Agenda, which the countries of the region have agreed upon and which had its founding milestone with the holding of the First Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in Havana more than 45 years ago in 1977. This robust and progressive agenda recognizes the need to design informed public policies that are based on quality data and statistics that not only disaggregate statistics by sex, but that they are carried out with a gender and diversity perspective. This is synthesized in the Montevideo strategy, agreed in 2016, where States are urged to transform data into information, information into knowledge and knowledge into political decision. The Buenos Aires Commitment, recently agreed in November 2022 at the last Regional Conference on Women, emphasized the importance of strengthening the production and analysis of quality information to end discrimination against women and girls and transition in effectively towards the care society, where the sustainability of life, equality and the dignity of people are the center.
He also recognized that the Observatory was born in a favorable context as Cuba has a solid statistical system and shows with the creation of this instrument positioned at the highest level, the political will to prioritize gender equality as a central issue on the national agenda for the development of the country.
At the end, Ana Güezmes reiterated ECLAC’s willingness to continue with technical assistance if the Observatory of Cuba requires it, in which it will be possible to deepen the transfer of capacities and the experience of the Observatory for Gender Equality for Latin America and the Caribbean (OIG) carried out by ECLAC based on the mandate conferred on it by the member states at the Regional Conference on Women held in Quito in 2007. The OIG offers key resources for formulating public policies and monitoring compliance with the commitments of the countries in gender equality, through the production and management of statistics and gender indicators, legislative and public policy repositories, analytical reports and studies and georeferenced maps of care. She pointed out her conviction that the OCIG will follow the path of the OIG and will constitute a space for learning and a good practice that will enrich South-South cooperation in the region.
