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The
legal noose is tightening around the United Nations to take
responsibility for unleashing the world’s worst cholera epidemic
in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, where hundreds of
thousands have been affected by the deadly disease.
On
Oct. 9, lawyers representing over 5,000 Haitian cholera victims
and their families will file a class action lawsuit in the
Southern District of New York to demand that the UN recognize
its responsibility for introducing cholera into Haiti three
years ago and pay reparations.
Lawyers with the Boston-based Institute for Justice and
Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Port-au-Prince-based
International Lawyers Office (BAI)
first brought a legal petition
against the UN in November 2011 within the world body’s legal
redress framework. That 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” and sought 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.
It
took the UN over 15 months to reply on Feb. 21, 2013 in the form
of a
two-page letter arguing that
“these claims are not receivable pursuant to Section 29 of the
Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United
Nations” governing the 9,000 UN soldiers deployed in Haiti since
June 2004 as part of the Security Council-mandated UN Mission to
Stabilize Haiti (MINUSTAH).
‘‘They may have immunity, but they don’t have impunity,’’
responded lawyer Ira Kurzban of the civil rights law firm
Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger, Tetzelli & Pratt (KKWT), who
collaborates with the IJDH.
On
May 8, IJDH lawyers held another press conference to tell the UN
that, having exhausted internal UN legal avenues, they would
soon be bringing a lawsuit in U.S. courts. That promise is to
be fulfilled at 10 a.m. on Oct. 9 when the lawyers will present
their case to a judge at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse
on 500 Pearl Street in New York.
Over
seven medical research teams, including one sponsored by the UN
itself, have investigated the cholera epidemic and concluded
that it was unleashed when cholera-infected UN Nepalese soldiers
stationed in the town of Mirebalais on Haiti’s Central Plateau
allowed their sewage to leak into the headwaters of the
Artibonite River, Haiti’s largest. Cholera, a water-borne
bacteria, is primarily transmitted when human feces infects
drinking water.
The epidemic has killed over 8,300 in Haiti
in the past three years and sickened over 650,000.
The
legal action comes at a time when high-ranking UN officials are
urging Secretary General to “come clean.” On Oct. 8, UN High
Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that “Haiti’s
cholera victims should get compensation but she didn’t say by
whom,” according to the Associated Press. “The remarks are the
first time a UN official has spoken publicly about a need to
provide compensation for Haiti’s cholera victims.”
Pillay’s remarks were made in Geneva, Switzerland at the Oct. 8
ceremony for the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders.
The BAI’s lead lawyer, Mario Joseph, was one of the three
finalists for the prize.
On
Aug. 7, Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the former chief of UN Peacekeeping
Operations from 2000 to 2008, tweeted that: “Peacekeepers have
done a lot for Haiti, but UN needs to come clean on cholera
crisis. Strong report from Yale Law School.”
He
was referring to a 58-page
report entitled “Peacekeeping
without Accountability: The United Nations’ Responsibility for
the Haitian Cholera Epidemic,” which concludes that: “1)The
cholera epidemic in Haiti is directly traceable to MINUSTAH
peacekeepers and the inadequate waste infrastructure at their
base in Méyè. 2) The UN’s refusal to establish a claims
commission for the victims of the epidemic violates its
contractual obligation to Haiti under international law. 3) By
introducing cholera into Haiti and denying any form of remedy to
victims of the epidemic, the UN has failed to uphold its duties
under international human rights law. 4) The UN’s introduction
of cholera into Haiti and refusal to accept responsibility for
doing so has violated principles of international humanitarian
aid.”
In
May 2012, even UN Special Envoy to Haiti Bill Clinton
admitted that a UN Nepalese
soldier had brought cholera to Haiti, depositing “his waste
stream into the waterways of Haiti and into the bodies of
Haitians.”
For
the lawsuit to be filed Oct. 9, “there are five named plaintiffs
in the complaint, but we are filing a class action which means
that they will act as representatives for all others similarly
situated, that is, all others who either contracted cholera
themselves or had a family member die from the disease,”
explained Kermshlise Picard, IJDH’s Communications Coordinator.
Having the judge accept the case as a class action is important,
said another IJDH lawyer Brian Concannon, because “any of the
almost 700,000 victims can opt in.”
In
May, IJDH lawyers had said they might seek $100,000 for the
family of each cholera victim who died and $50,000 for each
victim who lived through the ordeal. But in this week’s filing,
“we are not making any specific demand at this point,” Concannon
said.
“This is an historic opportunity for the U.S. courts
to hold the United Nations strictly to its treaty obligations,
by refusing to allow the UN to hide behind immunity when it
refuses to provide its victims any alternative," Concannon
concluded. |
