Fidel Castro and Socioeconomic Human Rights in Africa: A Multi-Level Analysis
Under Fidel Castro, Cuban foreign policy in Africa was marked by energetic activities, particularly from about 1975 to 1991, that some commentators dub “intervention.” This Article assesses and sheds light on these acts of “intervention,” focusing specifically on the social, economic, and cultural human rights (or socioeconomic human rights) plank of that policy. The academic literature tends to subsume Cuban investments in socioeconomic human rights in Africa under Castro (where it covers these rights at all) under its general program of military assistance in service of international communism (or the international socialist movement). This Article takes a more disaggregating and complicated view. It portrays Castro’s contributions to socioeconomic human rights in Africa, in its own right, unattached to its general military assistance programs, as a function of three interrelated variables: (1) Cuban national security,(2) service to the international socialist movement, and (3) the synergistic interaction of these two variables. Moving forward, it argues that Cuba under Castro deserves recognition as a global Good Samaritan because of a broad view of national security the country undertook by pursuing principled policies abroad that consistently and systematically infused human rights in its external policies, one of a rare example from the socialist world in a literature dominated by attention to capitalist-oriented states.
Recommended Citation: Philip C. Aka, Fidel Castro and Socioeconomic Human Rights in Africa: A Multi-Level Analysis, 43 Fordham Int'l L.J. 41 (2019).