Recruits in Haiti’s self-declared army, which is seeking to manipulate the situation whereby the UN stabilisation mission in the country is viewed by many as an occupying force installed to entrench the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Armed group is waging a brazen campaign aimed at stoking public anger at the continued presence of the 10,000-strong UN mission in Haiti and inviting violent conflict with authorities, write MICHAEL NORBY and BRIAN FITZPATRICK in Port-au-Prince

In the overgrown parade grounds of a long-abandoned military base outside Port-au-Prince, the most recent player in the surreal battle for the hearts and minds of the Haitian people delivers a chilling message.

Flanked by 150 uniformed men, Larose Aubin seems ready to plunge the battered nation into utter chaos.

Aubin, an animated former army sergeant, speaks for a group of one-time soldiers and younger recruits calling for the immediate return of the Haitian Armed Forces (FAd’H), 17 years after the notoriously brutal military was scrapped.

The rogue movement began in earnest after the May 2011 inauguration of president Michel Martelly, who had made the army’s return a pillar of his election campaign.

When it became clear, however, that remobilisation would take several years and that the majority would not be included, the disgruntled group seized old army installations across the country and issued demands. Mocking government attempts to pay them off, they say the time for talk is over.

“We’re not joking around,” says Aubin. “We’re going to come with force and with the population, and we’ll get what we’re looking for. Even if we lose our lives, we will fight. They can’t kill us all.”

Well-armed and highly visible as they patrol the nation’s cities in military fatigues, the 3,000– strong group claims to be ready to bring peace and security to Haiti; a new army that should not be feared. However, the rhetoric of another former sergeant, Yves Jeudy, tells a different story, as he earmarks the upcoming Haitian Flag Day holiday as a deadline.

“After May 18th, if the government hasn’t done anything, they will see what happens,” he declares. “We’re not going back and they need to give us an answer quick.”

This final challenge comes after a brazen campaign aimed at stoking public anger at the continued presence of the 10,000-strong United Nations stabilisation mission in Haiti, which was put in place after the overthrow of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

On April 19th, the group amplified its intentions as 50 men – some armed with grenades – arrived at parliament and disrupted a legislative session to ratify prime minister Laurent Lamothe.

No confrontation occurred but the inaction of the UN mission and the Haitian national police (PNH) was a major embarrassment. The ragtag army took full advantage of the impunity, and has now used the resulting traction and sense of legitimacy to invite a violent confrontation with authorities.

This cavalier approach is deliberate and seeks to manipulate the situation whereby the UN mission is viewed by many as an occupying force installed to entrench the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Shortly after their arrival, anger at the peacekeepers began to grow after violent incursions into the Port-au-Prince slums of Cité Soleil and Bel-Air, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties. Instances of abuse and extreme negligence have compounded matters. In March, for example, two Pakistani peacekeepers were convicted of the January 20th rape of a 14-year-old boy in the town of Gonaïves, and several similar claims have emerged.

IN OCTOBER 2010, Haiti suffered its first ever cholera outbreak. Since then 7,000 people have died and over half a million have become ill. Overwhelming evidence suggests that troops from Nepal brought the disease to Haiti, but the UN mission has yet to officially accept responsibility.

Against this backdrop, it’s understandable that some would favour the reinstatement of the dreaded army over “foreigners“, as Aubin claims they do. Wary that this hostility could ignite a public backlash, it’s likewise easy to see why the UN mission is reluctant to deploy chapter seven of the UN charter, which allows military action when peace is threatened.

Finally testing the waters last Sunday, however, a joint Haitian police/UN operation saw checkpoints set up in Port-au– Prince and other towns, and two armed men in military uniforms were arrested. These were the first detentions since the armed gangs began patrolling cities. The move was a subtle response, aimed at both sending a message to the army camps and gauging the public’s reaction, yet it signals the opening of a potentially dangerous new chapter.

“Our goal remains to support the PNH to disarm those in possession of illegal firearms,” said UN mission spokesman Lt Cmdr Jim Hoeft, offering an ambiguous explanation of the arrests.

Though Hoeft declined to discuss exactly when a decision was made to begin flexing muscles, he did say that UN troops were “always ready for actions like these” and that “some operations are predetermined, some are based on operational observations”.

The mood of the people will most likely dictate the strategy of both sides as the situation begins to boil. With atrocious social conditions prevalent and the country’s fledgling democracy apparently bludgeoned into submission, for some, what has been referred to as “option chaos” may look more and more appealing.

ONLY A year in office, Martelly has lurched from one crisis to the next. Lamothe was installed as prime minister last week, the president’s fourth choice for the job after lawmakers rejected two earlier nominees. Gary Conille was approved for the role in October, but resigned after just four months after his plan to audit reconstruction contracts drew the ire of the president.

Martelly’s election victory itself was soiled by the forced exclusion of Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, and a dismal turnout of just 24 per cent. The technicality used by Haiti’s electoral council to exclude the party was that it had submitted improper documents.

To put into perspective what this expulsion meant: In December 1990, Aristide was elected with 67 per cent of the vote under the banner of the Lavalas movement. In December 1995, another Lavalas candidate, René Préval, was elected with 88 per cent of the vote.

By then representing Fanmi Lavalas – which had emerged from a split in the movement – Aristide was re-elected in November 2000 with a 92 per cent total. Finally, in February 2006, Préval won 51 per cent of votes, also backed by Fanmi Lavalas.

In short, though it is accepted that each election result since 1990 has grown steadily more unreliable, the broader Lavalas movement has clearly served as the voice of the Haitian poor for over two decades. Now, in a country where 80 per cent of the population lives on $2 or less a day, it appears that this platform does not fit the post-earthquake landscape.

“The people no longer believe that Haiti will have the opportunity to have a democracy,“ said Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

“Their options are now local gangs, the UN, the return of the army, or some kind of clientelism relationship with the government. That’s what they think is realistic.“

In the face of criticism from western diplomats and with a dubious mandate, Martelly’s plans to create a 3,500-strong army has evoked memories of the Haitian Armed Forces and its dreaded Tonton Macoutes death squads, used by the decades-long Duvalier dictatorships to crush dissent.

In more recent times, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti paramilitaries helped Gen Raoul Cédras’s military junta – which overthrew the first Aristide government – kill an estimated 3,000 people between 1991 and 1994.

MARTELLY CLAIMS the force is needed to deal with border security and help his struggling police, but critics say there are far more pressing issues facing the nation. Either way, the half-hearted attempts to disarm the “soldiers” has led to widespread speculation in Haiti, including theories that question the president’s true intentions. Others cite political opportunists or outside interests as possible benefactors of the impending chaos.

The group has new trucks and uniforms, and enough fuel and provisions to sustain a prolonged standoff; clearly someone of influence is pulling the strings.

Georges Michel, a member of the commission appointed by Martelly to blueprint the army’s return, says the possibility of this crisis materialising was forecast to the president in a January 1st report, and fears the consequences of inaction may be severe.

“The people are with them,“ he said of the holdouts. “This would be a major catastrophe for Martelly if he calls upon Minustah [UN mission] to crack down on them – they will be seen as heroes and Martelly as the villain.“

In Gonaïves, a three-hour drive north of Port-au-Prince, witnesses to the brutality of the Haitian military are not so sympathetic. We’re in the seaside slum of Raboteau where, at around 4am on April 22nd, 1994, over 100 FAd’H soldiers and their Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti paramilitary henchmen attacked unsuspecting residents, leaving an estimated 26 to 50 people dead.

From the edge of the village, we walk past the stagnant orange-tinged salt mines to the shoreline — the same 300-yard route many of the victims thought would take them to safety exactly 18 years ago. The horror is fresh in the memories of the 12 survivors who accompany us; their stories a chilling reminder of an obscene barbarism.

“The victims were men and women, girls and boys,” recalls Henry-Claude Elismé. “Some of the dead were eaten by pigs and wild dogs. We don’t really know how many died in total because the army stayed for days, digging holes, dumping bodies on top of each other.”

RABOTEAU, SEEN as a pro-democracy safe haven, was punished for its opposition to the Cédras junta, which was barely clinging to power in the face of international isolation. Troops burst into houses as people slept, beating and torturing some and gunning down anyone who ran.

Those who survived the blind sprint to the sea leapt into fishing boats for the safety of the ocean, only to be slaughtered by troops positioned in 13 small boats just offshore. They then used the next several days to cover their tracks.

The Cédras regime fell soon after, as did the FAd’H, which Aristide disbanded upon being reinstated after US intervention. In Raboteau, at least, the victims of one of the final atrocities of the army are under no illusions about what a new force would mean.

In Port-au-Prince, where 420,000 people made homeless by the 2010 earthquake still live in horrendous tent cities, impatience is growing. Cholera cases have tripled since the rainy season began a month ago, and access to fresh water or healthcare is sparse. Much of the capital remains a trash-filled wasteland of broken buildings where malnutrition kills and violence is spiralling out of control.

Irwin Stotzky, author of Silencing the Guns in Haiti, served as an adviser to presidents Aristide and Préval and investigated the human rights abuses of the Cédras regime. He says the thought of throwing 3,500 armed men at this problem is obscene.

“The idea that they need an army in the middle of all this is ridiculous,“ he says. “What they need is an educational system, a governmental structure, food, housing.

“Who are they going to fight?“ he asks. “The Haitian army has never fought anybody but Haitians.”

Click HERE to See the Original Article 

The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which began in late 2010, is bad and getting worse, for reasons that are well understood and that the aid community has done far too little to resolve. A chronic lack of access to clean water and sanitation make Haitians vulnerable to spreading sickness, especially as spring rains bring floods, as they always do. Summer hurricanes are bound to come; more misery and death will follow. The Pan American Health Organization has said the disease could strike 200,000 to 250,000 people this year. It has already killed more than 7,000.

Doctors Without Borders said this month that the country is unprepared for this spring’s expected resurgence of the disease. Nearly half the aid organizations that had been working in the rural Artibonite region, where this epidemic began and 20 percent of cases have been reported, have left, the organization said. “Additionally, health centers are short of drugs and some staff have not been paid since January.”

It gets worse: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report this month that cholera in Haiti was evolving into two strains, suggesting the disease would become much harder to uproot and that people who had already gotten sick and recovered would be vulnerable again.

The United Nations bears heavy responsibility for the outbreak: its own peacekeepers introduced the disease through sewage leaks at one their encampments. Before that, cholera had not been seen in Haiti for more than a hundred years. But the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, Nigel Fisher, admitted in an interview on May 3 that “what we are doing is sort of patchwork, Band-Aid work on a fundamental problem.” While two nongovernmental organizations began a vaccination program last month in Port-au-Prince, it is only a trial that will protect a tiny part of the population. It is a worthy effort that will save lives, but not a substitute for basic water and sanitation.

A letter circulating in Congress calls on Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, to urge the world body to fully commit to eliminating cholera from the island of Hispaniola. The C.D.C. estimates that adequate water and sanitation systems will cost $800 million to $1.1 billion, a sum that can surely be wrested from the billions that nations have pledged to Haiti, though contributions have flagged as attention to the crisis has faded.

The Congressional letter echoes a demand from the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a human rights group that has sued the United Nations on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims. The U.N. and the international community have a responsibility to meet the crisis head-on. There are pledges to fulfill, dollars to deliver and lives to save.

Click HERE To See the Original Article
Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

UNITED NATIONS, May 13 — While the UN continues to deny that it introduced cholera to Haiti, or claims that “it doesn’t matter” who introduced it, today’s New York Times in an unsigned editorial states flatly that “the UN bears heavy responsibility for the outbreak: its own peacekeepers introduced the disease through sewage leaks at one of their encampments.”

We’ll see if the UN continues to reflexively send denial letters to the editor (below, there’s the UN system’s response to a finding of its corruption in Afghanistan, defending its 10-seater sofa set and $800 shredder).

But the Times editorial on Haiti goes on to recite that the “CDC estimates that adequate water and sanitation systems will cost $800 million.”

The editorial doesn’t directly say, but Inner City Press has reported, that this is the annual budget the UN spends on soldiers in Haiti, which has not seen a war for years.

Back on April 10, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman about this:

Inner City Press: yesterday, there was a press conference across the street by Haitian activists, including human rights activists and those who filed the claim for compensation with MINUSTAH and the Secretary-General. And, among other things, they said that they have heard nothing back from this UN, at any level, since December.… Since it has been four months and there have been new developments, is there a time line? What’s the UN’s thinking about this issue, because they are saying that it is hurting the credibility of the UN with Haitians and others?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Two things, Matthew. One is that, as we have repeatedly said, a claim has been received and it is being studied. There is nothing unusual in the time frame for studying a claim of this nature. The second point is that the focus is on what we can do to help the Haitian people now, and, of course, in the run-up to the rainy season, which is to come. So, I think that the focus is rightly on the need to help people now and to ensure that sanitation measures are put in place before the rainy season and during the rainy season. On the first part of the question, the answer remains the same.

Inner City Press: Mario Joseph, a very widely respected Haitian human rights lawyer, makes this comparison of the $800 million a year they say is spent on MINUSTAH peacekeeping, they say if this money was actually devoted to water purification, it would change Haitians’ lives. Is that the real number? Is there some way to get a comparison of what the UN spends in Haiti on just what you are saying, sanitation, water and forward-looking preventative measures as opposed to this peacekeeping force?

Spokesperson Nesirky: I think that we’ll be in a position to provide you and others with an overview of precisely the kind of measures that are being taken, and have been taken since the outbreak began. And obviously that is our focus. Progress has been made in reducing the number of cases, but there is a long way to go and that is precisely why the focus needs to be there. Let’s see if we can come up with something that gives you a good snapshot of where we are. Other questions, please?

And more than a month later, still no response to the formal claim on cholera.

On May 11, Inner City Press asked about corruption in Afghanistan:

Question: On Afghanistan? There is a report that the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, the Afghan Government, and the international donors have said that the UN system’s role in funding the Afghan national police may involve false receipts, what is the UN system’s response? Does it believe that there are problems with the program or that everything is running well?

Spokesperson: Seen the story; speak to UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]. Thanks very much.

And here’s from the response UNDP put out, and the UN sent to Inner City Press:

UNDP has a zero tolerance policy towards any form of mismanagement or corruption for its entire country program in Afghanistan. Your article refers to the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), which is part of our program and helps increase security by training the Afghan National Police—including through payment of salaries. It is audited every year by a globally respected and independent third party auditing firm.

A financial audit recently conducted by KPMG of the 2011 project’s expenditure concluded that there were no financial irregularities. In addition, a comprehensive evaluation of the previous LOTFA phase, also conducted by an external evaluation firm, found no cause for concern.

UNDP notes with concern a statement in your report, which describes a “pattern of bad behavior” at LOTFA – comments you have attributed to an anti-corruption body set up by the Afghan government, the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee. However, their report was released the day before your article was published and makes no reference to “bad behavior”. It does recommend improved oversight and monitoring and UNDP is committed to diligently following up on this.

Moreover, we would like to set the record straight on the following additional allegations in your piece:

1/ For example, a 10-seater sofa set and four tables costing $6,000 — which the article refers to as “luxury furniture” that might not even have been purchased – were procured with full procedural checks and are still being used by the head of the Afghan Border Police.

2/ The purchase order of a paper shredder, mentioned in your report, matched its $800 price. The purchase was in line with our procurement policy and was only approved after the project justified its need for a more robust product..

Yours truly, Satinder Bindra, Director of Communications — UNDP

So why the long — if factually challenged — response to the WSJ about Afghanistan, including 10-seater sofa set and “robust” $800 shredder? Especially when compared with the still total silence from the UN on the Haiti cholera claim and belated NYT story and editorial?

A range of possibilities, call them multiple choice:

a) The UN cares more about, or is more afraid of exposure of its misdeeds in, Afghanistan than Haiti because the US and other powers cares about Afghanistan. (The NYT on Haiti references a Congressional move to direct Susan Rice to act, but the UN’s responsibility for cholera introduction has yet to be acted on.)

b) The UN is more worried about the WSJ than the NYT, which it views as a liberal paper tiger.

c) UNDP is more media savvy than Ban Ki-moon’s Secretariat.

Click HERE to See The New York Times Article
Click HERE to See the Original Article
Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

In October of 2010, less than ten months after being hit by a devastating earthquake, Haiti experienced a cholera epidemic that quickly spread throughout the small nation. The waterborne disease has now killed at least 7,050 Haitians and sickened over 531,000 others. Meanwhile, nearly half a million earthquake victims remain without adequate housing, and Haitians continue to face one of the most challenging clean water and sanitation situations in the world. As the rainy season sets in, the country is experiencing a notable increase in the number of deaths attributed to cholera, according to the UN.

On April 18, 2012, the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law and the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CESCR) co-sponsored a U.S. Congressional Briefing that examined U.S. and international efforts to address what has become the world’s worst active cholera epidemic. With U.S. Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) giving introductory remarks and U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) giving concluding remarks, the panel of speakers was composed of Dr. Luiz Augusto Galvão, Manager of Sustainable Development and Environmental Health Area at the Pan-American Health Organization/World Health Organization; Donna Barry, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Partners In Health; Brian Concannon, Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti; Mario López-Garelli, Senior Human Rights Specialist at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Inter-American Commission); and Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of CESCR. The briefing was organized and moderated by J.P. Shuster, research associate at the O’Neill Institute. The group of panelists discussed urgent measures needed to contain the spread of the disease and the longer-term proposals for preventing cholera from becoming endemic to Haiti, as well as the role of international legal mechanisms for protecting health and human rights violations in Haiti’s greater post-earthquake context.

Click here to watch the briefing

Public Health Perspective

Donna Barry set the context of the discussion by recalling that health and water are basic human rights and that it is the government’s responsibility to provide access to both, which is why Partners In Health’s work in focuses on strengthening government systems. Barry emphasized the importance of recognizing that, prior to the earthquake, Haiti had the worst health indicators and worst access to clean water in the Western Hemisphere and had one of the world’s worst sanitation systems. Barry also highlighted Partners in Health’s recently launched Haiti Cholera Vaccine Project. The project aims to reduce incidence of disease and transmission and starts with the vaccination of 50,000 individuals in a rural community in Saint-Marc. The vaccination project is intended as a complementary measure to prevention and treatment efforts and is part of Partners in Health’s recommended five-point comprehensive response to combat cholera in Haiti: 1) strengthen water and sanitation infrastructure; 2) identify and treat all those with cholera symptoms; 3) role out a safe, affordable, and effective cholera vaccine; 4) strengthen Haiti’s public health system; and 5) improve effectiveness of foreign assistance to Haiti.

Echoing Barry’s description of Haiti prior to the earthquake, Dr. Luiz Augusto Galvão described the epidemic as “the perfect storm.” Galvão emphasized that, before the earthquake, only 17% of Haitians had access to improved sanitation, only 69% had access to drinking water (compared to 88% in Bolivia, the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti), and Haiti had not experienced a cholera outbreak for over 100 years. Galvão explained that an adequate sanitation system is important for recovery from a cholera outbreak and that Haiti’s population has demonstrated a strong willingness to participate in the efforts taken to stop the epidemic.

In response to the earthquake, PAHO/WHO and Haiti’s Ministry of Public Health and Population (MSSP) led the Health Cluster, a humanitarian response mechanism for the coordination of agencies, institutions, and organizations working in the health sector. As the first cholera cases were detected, the Health Cluster coordinated efforts for the storage and distribution of medicines (one of the biggest problems Haiti faced), treatment, and health promotion, including hygiene and water safety. The Health Cluster also developed messages aimed at helping communities understand the problem and the solutions involving hygiene, use of water, and water safety. Galvão also underscored PAHO’s focus on improving water quality and its participation in the Water and Sanitation Cluster, which is led by UNICEF.   PAHO’s current processes include ministerial meetings involving the Haiti and the Dominican Republic, as well as the development of national plans. PAHO has also proposed an international coalition to help Haiti that would be composed of PAHO, UN-WATER, UNICEF, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the World Bank, Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo (AECID), Canada, France, and Brazil, among others. The coalition is to be launched in June 2012.

Galvão also recalled the recent Call to Action for a Cholera-Free Hispaniola, sponsored by PAHO/WHO, the CDC, and UNICEF, together with governments of Haiti and the Dominican Republic that outlines four key lines of action: 1) improve water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure; 2) create a task force for water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure; 3) develop detailed plan and timeline for water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure; and 4) honor pledged post-earthquake funds and recruit new partners, which Galvão emphasized as a “fundamental solution” to control cholera in Haiti.

Legal Perspective

Mario López-Garelli presented on how the Inter-American Commission has used the mechanisms at its disposal to aid post-earthquake Haiti. While the Commission has been monitoring the general human rights situation in Haiti for over forty years, since the earthquake, the Commission has worked with the government and civil society organizations to promote the use of a human rights approach for the reconstruction of Haiti. Based on the information received, the Commission has primarily focused on the living and security conditions at the camps of internally displaced persons (IDPs), sexual violence against women and girls in these camps, and forced evictions. The Commission has used a number of its mechanisms to address these issues, including public hearings, working meetings, press releases, reports, working visits by the Commission’s Rapporteur for Haiti, and the issuance of precautionary measures (requests to the government to take the necessary measures to prevent irreparable harm to persons involved in a pending petition or case before the Commission).

López-Garelli explained that women and girls in IDP camps faced conditions that put them at risk of rape, beatings, and threats. Through the precautionary measures granted to protect women and girls in these camps, the Commission expressed to the Haitian government its concern over the lack of intervention and monitoring of the situation by state agencies that has exacerbated the situation.  Moreover, among other requests, the Commission requested that victims of sexual violence receive mental and psychological services, access to medical services, privacy during examinations, access to female medical and culturally sensitive providers with experience with rape victims, issuance of medical certificates, HIV prophylaxis, and emergency contraception. In response to the lack of security in the camps, the Commission requested that proper lighting, the presence of women police officers, patrolling, training of appropriate responses by police forces, creation of special units within judicial police of Haiti to investigate cases of rape and other forms of sexual violence, and the full participation of grassroots and women groups in the planning and implementation of these policies.

According to López-Garelli, while the Commission has since received encouraging information pointing to some improvement in the conditions that put girls and women at risk of sexual violence—improved lighting near toilets (where these attacks are most frequent), better treatment by police officers during investigations, and the drafting of necessary legislation—there are still recommendations that require implementation. The Commission continues to monitor the situation and is eager to continue utilizing all its mechanisms to help protect human rights in Haiti.

Brian Cocannon emphasized that while it is important to address the medical and public health issues of the problem, there is also a need to discuss the legal aspects of the situation, particularly that the cause can be explained in legal terms. Along with Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince, Cocannon’s organization, Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, filed a complaint in November 2011 on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims against the United Nations before both the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) Claims Unit and U.N. Secretary-General for allegedly acting recklessly and allowing the introduction and spread of cholera in Haiti. According to Concannon, U.N. accountability was clear. By failing to test Nepalese troops coming in as U.N. peacekeepers, who the U.N. knew were coming from a place with a cholera epidemic, and recklessly disposing waste at the Nepalese peacekeeper’s camp, the U.N. violated the law.  The U.N. has denied fault, claiming that the cholera outbreak was a result of a “confluence of factors,” including poor water and sanitation systems in Haiti. However, Concannon explained that while a confluence of factors play an important role in the epidemic, such factors gave the U.N. even more reason for being more careful.

The complaint filed asks that the U.N. 1) provide clean water and the sanitation necessary to control the epidemic, 2) compensation for the victims, and 3) an apology. Concannon described this lawsuit as an opportunity for the U.N. to “make things right” for the people in Haiti because, should the U.N. provide the necessary clean water and sanitation requested, the U.N. would help Haiti prevent the spread of other waterborne diseases in the future and be able to save thousands of lives lost every year to these diseases. The lawsuit is also an opportunity for the U.N. to help advance the rule of law. Finally, the lawsuit is an opportunity for the U.N. to garner public support by living up to its ideals.

Economic Perspective

Mark Weisbrot, an economist, described Haiti’s situation as a misallocation of resources. Weisbrot pointed out that the U.N. had spent $1.5 billion on MINUSTAH, the peacekeeping forces, while the needed infrastructure would cost $746 million, $230 million has been spent on cholera (not even a sixth of what has been spent on MINUSTAH), and the cost of the vaccination campaign is equivalent to a half-day’s budget of MINUSTAH. Therefore, Weisbrot saw Congress as potentially playing an important role in influencing the U.N. and other international actors to ensure the proper allocation of resources and placing political pressure on the U.N. to provide the resources needed for the improvement of water and sanitation system.

Moreover, Weisbrot emphasized the urgency of making sure that the necessary resources are deployed now and not misinterpret a decline of the epidemic as necessarily successful intervention. Last year, the international community reduced its efforts upon observing a decline before the rainy season and incorrectly interpreted it as a result of successful intervention. The decline was followed by a spike during the rainy season, during which more lives were lost. The international community should not make the same mistake.

For more background on the legal aspects of the cholera epidemic in Haiti, see our four-part series “A Call for U.N. Accountability for Cholera in Post-Earthquake Haiti” (see related posts below).

Click HERE to See The Original Article
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

Contact:
Brian Concannon, Jr., Esq., Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, brian@ijdh.org, +1–617-652‑0876 (English, French, Creole)
Mario Joseph, Av., Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, (in Haiti), mario@ijdh.org, +509‑3701-9879
(Creole, French, English)

Human Rights Groups Commend UN for Acknowledging
Limitations of “Band-Aid” Approach to Haiti Cholera

Thursday, May 10, 2012, Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Boston, USA—Rights groups in Haiti and the United States commend last week’s acknowledgment by United Nations official Nigel Fisher that the current efforts to alleviate cholera in Haiti are “patchwork, band-aid work on a fundamental problem.”  Fisher, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Haiti, acknowledged in a May 3rd interview with the UN News Centre that “What we are doing in the short-term … is necessary, but we all agree that the long-term solution is investment in improved drinking water sources and in waste management.”

“Mr. Fisher’s statement is a strong step in the right direction towards a sustainable response to the UN cholera epidemic,” said Brian Concannon Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and an attorney on a case filed by 5,000 cholera victims against the UN last November.  He added, “Now the UN needs to take responsibility for its harmful actions and actually start installing the comprehensive water and sanitation infrastructure that is the only long-term solution to the cholera epidemic.”

Numerous studies, including a report by the UN’s Independent Panel of Experts, establish that UN peacekeepers introduced cholera into Haiti in October 2010. The epidemic is now the world’s worst. It has killed over 7,200 people and sickened over 530,000.  Mr. Fisher warned that the epidemic could infect as many as 200,000 people in 2012 alone.  UN agencies estimate the cost of controlling the epidemic by installing comprehensive clean water and sanitation in Haiti at $746 million — $1.1 billion.

“Of course the UN can afford to pay for permanent solutions to cholera,” said Mario Joseph, Director of Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, and the lead attorney on the case against the UN.  “If the UN shortened the peacekeeping mission’s mandate by just one year, that would save $800 million.  Fewer ‘boots on the ground’ and more wells in the ground would save tens of thousands of lives every decade.  That is peace keeping.”

                                                                                                  ###

Click HERE to Download in PDF Version
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project