The UN has always disputed claims that Nepalese peacekeepers brought cholera to the island nine months after an quake struck Haiti, the first known appearance of the disease there in over 150 years.
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PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) A USA federal appeals court has upheld the United Nations’ immunity from a damage claim filed on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims who blame the U.N. for an epidemic of the deadly disease in Haiti.
Again, the cholera crisis that began in 2010 continues.
“The secretary-general deeply regrets the bad suffering the people of Haiti have endured as a result of the cholera epidemic”, the statement said.
However, a June 2011 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is endemic, were the likely cause of the outbreak. The troops had recently arrived in Haiti. They likely unwittingly carried the disease into Haiti and contaminated water supplies there with human waste.
The disease is now considered “endemic” in Haiti, meaning it’s an illness that occurs regularly. It can cause severe diarrhea and vomiting, which leads to extreme dehydration. The patient loses so much fluid so quickly that the disease can prove fatal in a matter of days. Once it enters the water supply it is hard to stop – especially in a country like Haiti which has nearly no effective sewage disposal systems.
For years Haitians have been blaming the United Nations for this outbreak, even spraying painting “UN=Kolera” on the walls of the peacekeeping base.
The statement from spokesman Farhan Haq does not go as far as admitting the United Nations was at fault.
In a press release Thursday, the institute said the U.N.’s acknowledgment of its role in the crisis was a “significant shift” for the organization, which has spent six years refusing to admit any culpability.
There is a legal challenge against the United Nations for denying a justice mechanism for victims of the outbreak.
The deputy spokesman for the Secretary-General, Farhan Haq, said in an e-mail this week that “over the past year, the United Nations has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera”. “And that’s what we’ve been doing in these last months, as well”, he said. How to do the right thing.
The court did not decide the case on the merits of its claim that a contingent of the UN’s peacekeeping mission, which arrived after the quake, had introduced cholera when Nepalese soldiers contaminated waters of a tributary to the Artibonite River, which serves as a primary water source for Haiti’s population centers.
The natural disaster alone killed 220,000 people, but it was 10 months later that the muddy and overcrowded camps became a breading site for the disease. “It’s about time that they accept responsibility”.
“We think this is a major victory”, said Beatrice Lindstrom, an attorney at the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti who represents Haitian families suing the United Nations.
Ban is “actively working to develop a package that would provide material assistance and support for those Haitians most directly affected by cholera”, a spokesman said, reading a statement from the UN’s top diplomat, who has four months left in his term.
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Concannon says the U.N.’s position has been an “affront to [the] dignity” of Haitians: “This big organization that has been tasked by the world to promote human rights and accountability and the rule of law has been denying something that was so clearly undeniable”.
