A/HRC/14/3 equal before the law and that the recognition of violations brings with it the right to reparations for victims. 8. Nicaragua has an array of international instruments, many of which it is a party. However, being a party to these instruments is not sufficient if States do not display political will and true commitment to implementing obligations entered into these instruments. The primary responsibility and obligation to promote and protect human rights rests with the State. Nicaragua was fostering strategies to promote human development, thereby eradicating the poverty inherited from exclusionary social and economic policies. However, a nation deprived of the right to development is condemned to living in poverty and underdevelopment. States would not be able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals as long as international cooperation was limited and politically conditioned. The full enjoyment of human rights could not be provided as long as international trade continues to be unjust. As long as there were multinationals more powerful than States themselves, nations such as Nicaragua would continue to be impoverished. The capitalist system had failed the entire world, as could be seen from the financial and economic crisis. 9. Nicaragua was victim of a 16-year-old system that limited people’s rights. Poverty deprived Nicaraguans of the possibility of a decent life. Thousands of Nicaraguans had been forced to migrate, thus exposing themselves to suffering and oblivion. 10. Nicaragua had set as a priority recovering for the Nicaraguan people the rights that were denied. Nicaragua has a national human development plan for 2009-2011, which provides for development strategies and a vision of human rights, without discrimination of any kind. It included a national system for well-being and social equity, with clear policies and programmes regarding food, health, education, social housing, drinking water and social security. With regard to economic, social and cultural rights, the main challenge was fighting poverty. 11. In 2007, the Government successfully promoted a programme of food production vouchers to benefit 75,000 rural families over a period of five years through a mechanism of transfers, which provides them with means of production. The programme was extended to the “zero usury” financing programme. 12. Food security had become crucial in an international setting experiencing a world crisis. In Nicaragua, the right to food was constitutionally guaranteed. The Parliament recently approved a law on food and nutritional sovereignty and security, allowing Nicaragua to set up complementary programmes such as the “zero hunger” programme, the food production vouchers scheme, housing vouchers, schools and market gardens, programmes for comprehensive food and child nutrition, and school lunches and milk programmes. Various United Nations agencies, including the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, have recognized the programmes as models of good practices. 13. Education was totally free of charge. Between 2006 and 2009, in solidarity with Cuba, Nicaragua supported the programme, “Yes, I can!”, with which it had reduced illiteracy in the country to less than 5 per cent, a situation certified by UNESCO. It had established five educational policies to improve the quality of the educational system and to decentralize it. Nicaragua had also a sustainable school food programme cited as model programme by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. 14. Nicaraguans had equal access to the right to health. The State prohibitedall charges for health services. . Nicaragua had managed to reduce the mortality from tuberculosis to half of the level recorded in 1990. Since 2007, Nicaragua had reached a low-risk level category for malaria. It has recorded 78 municipal areas out of 153 where there was no transmission of malaria. Since 2008, it guaranteed anti-retro-viral treatment for 734 HIVpositive people. 4