But it represents a significant shift after more than five years of high-level denial of any involvement or responsibility of the United Nations in the outbreak, which has killed at least 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands.
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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 natural disaster, 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.
USA courts have consistently found the global body, headquartered in NY, to be immune from lawsuits over the cholera epidemic that has killed 10,000 people since it broke out in 2010 near a United Nations peacekeepers’ base.
After five years of denial, the United Nations has admitted its part in bringing cholera to Haiti during disaster relief measures following the 2010 quake that devastated the country.
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.
A 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 of the water-borne disease.
A day before the US court’s decision in the suit, Haq said, “The UN’s been heavily engaged in cholera eradication since the 2010 outbreak, but over the past year, the UN 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”.
The comments come one day after a USA federal appeals court upheld the UN’s immunity from a damage claim filed in 2013 on behalf of cholera victims in Haiti.
In Friday’s remarks, Haq stopped short of acknowledging U.N.’s direct responsibility for introducing cholera in Haiti.
Cholera is spread through infected faeces.
“Despite repeated appeals, these efforts have been seriously underfunded, and severe and persistent funding shortfalls remain”.
A U.N. acknowledgement that it played a role in introducing cholera to Haiti and vows to aid victims were welcomed Friday in the Caribbean nation, which has experienced the worst outbreak of the disease in recent history.
Thousands of Haitian victims previous year filed a class action suit against the United Nations in the U.S. Southern District federal court.
“This is a groundbreaking first step towards justice”, said Beatrice Lindstrom, a staff attorney at the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
The US courts have rejected claims for compensation filed by victims’ families.
“The Secretary General deeply regrets the awful suffering the people of Haiti have endured as a result of the cholera epidemic”, Haq told reporters at United Nations headquarters.
Cholera is an acute gastrointestinal illness caused by ingesting food or drink contaminated with Vibrio cholerae bacteria.
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.
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With its temperate climate and infrastructure-including waste treatment facilities-decimated by the natural disaster, Haiti provided ideal conditions for the bacteria to thrive, and the disease spread quickly.
