In
his Sep. 23, 2016 address to the United Nations General
Assembly, Haitian President Jocelerme Privert raised the
issue of cholera which UN occupation troops
imported
into Haiti in
October 2010. On-going lawsuits in New York state are
seeking reparations for Haitian cholera victims. To
date, cholera has killed an estimated 10,000 Haitians
and sickened close to one million.
“The resurgence of
cholera cases in recent months is one of the most acute
challenges now facing Haiti,” Privert said in his
speech. Haiti’s government “has with great interest
taken note,” he said, of the “UN’s recognition of its
moral responsibility” for Haiti’s cholera epidemic, now
the world’s worst. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s
admission “opens the way to real discussions about [the
UN’s] obligation to eliminate cholera in Haiti forever”
and “for the implementation of a substantially
strengthened program to fight against cholera and to
assist victims and their families” in a way that “will
fully meet the Haitian people’s expectations."
Unlike Presidents
René Préval and Michel Martelly before him, Privert was
commendably the first Haitian president to call out the
UN for its responsibility in unleashing cholera in
Haiti.
However,
Haïti Liberté’s
director, Berthony Dupont, feels Privert did not go far
enough.
“The one word
Haitians were waiting for him to utter was
‘reparations,’ and he stopped short of that,” Dupont
said.
In a
Sep. 21 editorial,
Dupont wrote that “the Haitian state seems to be in
concert with the United Nations in blocking the way to
any proposed reparations for victim families” by
“refusing until now to give a medical certificate” that
would be “affirmative evidence, ratified by a justice of
the peace, so that victims who didn’t have the chance to
be hospitalized can benefit from any future
compensation.”
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