by Kim Ives
On May 8, lawyers representing over 5,000 Haitian
cholera victims told the United Nations that they are taking the
world body to court in 60 days if it doesn’t accept
responsibility for introducing the deadly microbe into Haiti’s
waters.
Lawyers Brian Concannon, Jr.
and Ira Kurzban of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in
Haiti (IJDH) said they will file a lawsuit in New York courts in
early July if UN officials don’t walk back their claim to be
immune from all responsibility for unleashing the world’s
deadliest cholera epidemic when they allowed cholera-infected
Nepalese troops to deploy and discharge their sewage into the
headwaters of the Artibonite River on Haiti’s Central Plateau in
October 2010. Since then, the disease has spread throughout
Haiti, killing over 8,300 and sickening over 670,000.
Meanwhile, on May 9, the
Haitian Senate (with only one abstention) unanimously voted for a resolution demanding that the UN compensate Haitian cholera
victims. Among other things, the senators proposed “the creation
of a commission of experts in international and penal law to
study what legal means, both nationally and internationally, we
could use to prove MINUSTAH’s responsibility” for unleashing
the cholera epidemic.
In February, UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon rebuffed a petition which IJDH and the
Port-au-Prince-based Office of International Lawyers (BAI)
filed with the world body
in November 2011 seeking UN financial compensation for 5,000
Haitian petitioners, constructive action to prevent cholera’s
spread, and a formal acknowledgment of and apology for the UN’s
responsibility for bringing cholera into Haiti.
The 37-page
complaint charged
that the “UN is liable for negligence, gross negligence,
recklessness, and deliberate indifference for the health and
lives of Haitian people resulting in petitioners’ injuries and
deaths from cholera.”
The lawyers delivered their
latest ultimatum at the UN headquarters’ Dag Hammarskjold
Library Auditorium in New York, the same venue where they
announced the original petition.
Concannon and Kurzban were
joined by Haitian Dr. Jean Ford Figaro, who is the Health
Education Coordinator at Boston Medical Center. “Now cholera is
getting worse,” Dr. Figaro told the press conference. “The UN
failed to follow the recommendations they asked for, the
recommendations they promised to implement, the recommendations
that cost them no money at all. Because of this, the Haitian
people have no choice but to seek justice by legal means.”
In
their February response (a
two-page
letter which took 15 months to draft), UN
officials argued
that “these claims are not receivable pursuant to Section 29 of
the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United
Nations.”
‘‘They may have immunity, but
they don’t have impunity,’’ responded Ira Kurzban.
The lawyers will seek $100,000
for the family of each cholera victim who died and $50,000 for
each victim who lived through the ordeal. If successful, the
lawsuit could cost the UN billions of dollars.
Despite having thousands of
petitioners in Haiti, in order to pursue the lawsuit in New
York, the IJDH lawyers need Haitians victims living in New York
to step forward to be represented by them. The criteria to
become a claimant in this imminent suit against the UN are: 1)
that you are a resident of New York State; 2) that you or your
child have personally contracted cholera in Haiti and sought
medical attention in Haiti or elsewhere; or 3) that you lost an
immediate family member to cholera.
For any questions or more information, contact the
Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, 666 Dorchester Ave.,
Boston, MA,
kolera@ijdh.org or
call 347-770-1008. |