More than a dozen United Nations independent rights experts are slamming the world agency on its response to the cholera epidemic in Haiti that has left more than 10,000 dead and over 800,000 infected after being introduced by U.N. peacekeepers shortly after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake.
The group, which includes outgoing U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston, says the U.N.’s response and failure to compensate victims has fallen short. They are calling on U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to urgently step up efforts to fulfill a U.N. pledge to help victims.
“The hope had been that S-G Guterres would have taken seriously the demands that the U.N. actually admit that it was responsible for bringing cholera, but he has systematically avoided addressing that crucial issue in any way,” Alston told the Miami Herald. “It seems that he is content for the U.N. to have no formal recourse procedure in place when these sorts of disasters are provoked by U.N. actors, and that seems to be a very dangerous policy when the U.N. is under attack from so many directions.”
The importance of relief for Haiti’s cholera victims, the group of 14 experts told Guterres in a letter, is even more urgent in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which could deal a double blow to them and their families.
The experts have also written to the Haitian government asking why it has done nothing to promote the cause of the victims and why it has not made use of its legal right to challenge the U.N. in the International Court of Justice.
“For several years, I sought an invitation from the government so that these and other matters could be discussed,” said Alston, who in a 2016 report to the U.N. General Assembly called on the U.N. to accept its legal responsibility for the outbreak and provide appropriate remedies.
Alston said COVID-19, which is caused by the novel coronavirus, has brought much greater awareness of what it means to lose 10,000 people in an epidemic.
“At a time when some countries are expressing outrage and demanding accountability in relation to what appears to be a natural mutation, it is useful to recall the fact that not one of those countries said or did anything to hold the U.N. to account when the facts are indisputable and its responsibility unquestionable,” Alston said.
With COVID-19 and the adoption of similar measures as in cholera prevention, many have indeed been reminded of the waterborne disease that struck Haiti 10 months after the earthquake, when Nepalese peacekeepers contaminated a major river.
And just as COVID-19 has come to highlight Haiti’s weak health system and vulnerability, so too did cholera, which mostly sickens and kills those without access to clean water and sanitation.
During the cholera outbreak, the government and aid organizations strongly emphasized hand washing and no hand shaking, even as the U.N. refused to accept blame for its role. Cholera treatment centers went up around the country and then-Haitian President René Préval even took to the airwaves to show Haitians how to make a lifesaving remedy to keep themselves hydrated should they become infected. Though Préval’s instruction was criticized by some in the private sector who thought it was unbecoming of a president, many in the population, who lacked access to a health center, welcomed it.
Today, Haitians continue to face similar challenges, except there is no cure or vaccine for COVID-19. And about 35% of Haitians still lack basic drinking water services and two-thirds have limited or no sanitation services, which is far below the average for the region, according to the Pan American Health Organization.
Of $400 million the U.N. began seeking nearly three years ago to, among other things, expand access to water and sanitation in the country, only $20.5 million has been raised. Meanwhile, only “a pitiful $3.2 million,” has been spent, the experts said.
“This is a deeply disappointing showing following the loss of 10,000 lives,” they said.
The experts also raised concerns about the U.N.’s refusal to provide individual compensation, which victims have pushed for in protests and signage around the country. Instead, the U.N. has focused on developing community assistance programs, which the experts said have been designed without consultation with victims.
“Some victims prefer monetary payments, an option that was once on the table, but the U.N. has foreclosed that possibility seemingly without carrying out consultations or producing a detailed feasibility assessment,” said the experts. “Compensation is ordinarily a central component of the right to an effective remedy, and development projects are simply not a replacement for reparations.”
Earlier this year, the United Nations noted that Haiti was moving toward being cholera free.
The last confirmed case of infection was a boy under age 5 in I’Estère in the Artibonite region during the last week of January 2019. He recovered. To consider cholera eliminated, a country must remain cholera-free for three years.
Human rights advocates who have been fighting on behalf of cholera victims said the experts’ statement was conveyed in a formal communication process ordinarily used to question governments about human rights violations. It demonstrates escalating concern within the U.N.’s own human rights system that the organization is failing to uphold its obligations to cholera victims, they said.
“We believe it is unprecedented for such a broad coalition of U.N. mandate-holders to send a communication that raises ‘past failures and ongoing violations’ by the U.N. itself,” said Sandra C. Wisner, a staff attorney with the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
The experts’ letter to Guterres and the Haitian government was prompted by a formal complaint filed by IJDH and its Haiti affiliate, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, and the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School in January.
The complaint criticizes the U.N.’s “New Approach to Cholera in Haiti.” Among the concerns raised: the U.N.’s reliance on voluntary contributions to fund the plan from member countries; the marginalization of victims in its planning and implementation; the favoring of community projects over direct compensation; and the U.N.’s failure to take corrective action to prevent a repeat of the cholera tragedy.
“These shortcomings have taken on renewed urgency in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, as survivors of cholera are left particularly vulnerable,” Wisner said.
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