In 1945, much of Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa, lay in ruins. Countries faced severe economic strife in an attempt to rebuild what was lost. The war led to the deaths of over 80 million people, a staggering toll of military and civilian lives. In the midst of all this suffering, the end of World War II would signify the beginning of an era towards maintaining international security and peace through international cooperation.
Thus, 51 nations gathered to sign a Charter that would become the founding document of the United Nations, a multinational organization intended to give humanitarian assistance and promote global development. The U.N. strives to build a better world “guided by the purposes and principles contained in its founding Charter” by promoting democracy and international law, and by protecting human rights.
However, despite the U.N.’s “devotion” to tackling the international concerns that countries face in the 21st century, from sustainable development to confronting humanitarian and health emergencies, its most recent history may tell us a different story.
Cholera’s Emergence in Haiti: A Devastating Story
The year is 2010. In Haiti, the month of October of that year will go down in infamy.
In the small village of Meille, located in Haiti’s central plateau, a young man by the name of Rosemond Lorimé lived a simple life. His day consisted of helping the older folk raise pigs and turkeys, plant cassava, or swim in a nearby river. This simple life would all change, however, when a fatal disease swept through the nation.
Nine months after an earthquake struck the nation of Haiti, Rosemond found his life turned upside down when the first of his family fell ill: his father. It began with a pain that radiated in his stomach, followed by vomiting and diarrhea that left him severely dehydrated. That illness would soon spread to the rest of the family, leaving everyone in the household in quite critical conditions. His father’s sickness was the most intense, and he would eventually pass away from the disease. Rosemond not only lost a beloved member of the family but his father’s death also meant the loss of their breadwinner.
Rosemond’s is but one story depicting the infectious epidemic that lay waste to the country of Haiti and its people. It began with an intense pain in the stomach, radiating through the entire body, followed by vomiting and diarrhea. The sickness quickly took its toll until death by dehydration. This often fatal and infectious disease would affect thousands and become the disastrous epidemic that would change the course of the nation. Its name: cholera.
Despite the country’s extreme poverty and the destructive earthquake that lay waste to Haiti in January of that same year, Haiti was free of a cholera epidemic for about a century prior to the arrival of the U.N. peacekeeping force. These circumstances beg the question: What exactly was the source of the outbreak?
Negligence and Oversight: The U.N.’s Responsibility in the Cholera Outbreak:
Recent scientific research has overwhelming evidence that the source of the cholera epidemic was a U.N. peacekeeping force that had arrived from Nepal that very month, in the same region where the cholera outbreak was first reported. Shortly before these troops left Nepal, there had been an outbreak of cholera. As a result of failing to appropriately screen peacekeepers of transmittable diseases, the U.N. failed to prevent the disaster that was to come. The U.N. compound also did not meet international regulations as the peacekeeping mission was given inadequate sanitation facilities in the town of Mirebalais. This oversight proved deadly because cholera is spread through consuming the feces of another individual, and inadequate water treatment or poor sanitation make communities susceptible to the disease and allow it to spread quickly.
Consequently, cholera-infected waste leaked into Haiti’s largest river, the Artibonite, and because many Haitians are dependent on the river as a source of water, cholera spread like wildfire throughout the country and relentlessly killed thousands.
Despite the quick response from organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were able to prevent thousands of deaths from cholera, cases continued to emerge throughout the country. To this day, people continue to be affected by the cholera transmission and the U.N. has yet to provide sufficient efforts to improve Haiti’s water and sanitation infrastructure in order to achieve “large health gains” and reduce the chances of cholera spreading further.
Today, there are over 9,000 dead and over 800,000 sickened due to the carelessness of the U.N., and as cholera continues to sicken people to this day, the U.N. still hides shamefully, claiming immunity and failing to even claim responsibility until six years after the epidemic began to spread. The U.N. failed to abide by its own mandate of redressing victims of human rights abuses and violated its own principles of international accountability, despite claiming that these values are what it seeks to promote.
This is not to say that the U.N. does not successfully help many individuals across the globe suffering from humanitarian crises, but it failed to fulfill its obligation of helping the people of Haiti when they were not held accountable for their role in the disease’s outbreak and provide the necessary reparations.
Until 2016, the U.N. denied responsibility for being the source of the spread, although their own reports in 2011 showed that the strains of cholera in Nepal and Haiti were identical. This led several human rights organizations, including the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a United States human rights advocacy group, and the Haitian Bureau des Avocats Internationaux to file “claims for compensation under the procedures the U.N. promised to create as part of its agreement for sending peacekeepers to Haiti.” This claim was ignored for over a year, and when the U.N. finally responded, they claimed legal immunity under the 1946 Convention on Privileges and Immunities.
Instead, a U.N. spokesperson deemed that the outbreak was a result of “a confluence of circumstances” and reveals Haiti’s inability to cope with natural disasters. Rather than helping the country and its peoples, the U.N. blamed the cholera epidemic on the nation’s vulnerability from the earthquake in January.
Despite this inappropriate response by the U.N., many were hopeful when the Secretary-General of the U.N. announced in August of 2016 that they were developing a new approach to help the people of Haiti that were affected and rebuild the foundation of the country. It would provide the people with the necessary reparations they required, but for various reasons, the feeble attempt to right their wrong proved ineffective, especially due to lack of funding to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and waste management.
Susan Farbstein, co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic and a clinical professor of Harvard Law School, currently focuses her work on economic, social, and cultural rights. When asked about whether the cholera epidemic is still worth discussing today, Farbstein emphasized the fact that what happened in Haiti should be an ongoing discussion because the people of Haiti are still suffering and have not received the support they require to rebuild everything they lost. As one in six Haitian families had someone who was killed in the cholera epidemic, the event had a devastating long-term impact.
Apart from the fact that the people of Haiti were never given the material assistance and support they truly needed as a result of the United Nation’s mistake, the Secretary-General’s approach failed to even accept responsibility for their actions or apologize for all the organization had done.
Beatrice Lindstrom, clinical instructor at the International Human Rights Clinic and the supervising attorney of Advocates for Human Rights, provided the HPR with additional insight into the accountability of transnational actors and obligations of international organizations, especially as it relates to the access of remedies. When discussing the 2016 efforts to rebuild the country of Haiti, Lindstrom pointed out several aspects of the initiative that insufficiently met the goals the U.N. had set to achieve in Haiti. According to Lindstrom, “the new approach is only funded at 7% and there have not been any consolations for victims beyond those very small-scale community projects that victims have been largely sidelined in the process of developing.” The promises made to the victims of cholera are going unfulfilled, and for those interested in maintaining human rights and international justice, this issue must be resolved and requires our attention.
In not acting accordingly to fulfill their responsibilities, the U.N.’s actions are not only immoral but illegal according to international law, which mandates that the organization provides a way for third-parties to file claims against these peacekeeping forces. If the U.N. simply claims legal immunity every time claims are filed against them, there is no process that affected innocent bystanders can take to obtain justice and seek reparations for the damage that the U.N. has done.
In a desperate attempt to save face, the U.N. failed to hold itself accountable for the actions of its peacekeepers, who harmed innocent parties through actions that were unnecessary to the mission.
How the U.N.’s Actions Continue to Affect Haitians Today:
Due to many years of denial, it took an incredible effort from civil societies in Haiti and solidarity groups internationally to even have the U.N. admit its responsibility. From the moment the cholera epidemic began, the U.N. should have been held responsible for the compensation of those that they harmed during the course of their operations. Lindstrom told the HPR that this responsibility was “breached when the U.N. said that it would not receive any claims related to cholera” and would “not even allow this question to be put before any kind of independent body that could hear the evidence and decide the question of responsibility.”
The U.N. mission to help those in need is contradicted by their actions in leaking human waste (infected with cholera) into an important water source for the people of Haiti. The lack of transparency and utter lack of regard for the rights of Haitian people has proven that the U.N. is not fulfilling its purposes and is only delegitimizing the values it “seeks to promote”.
As the outbreak continues to affect Haitians today, it is vital that we shed light on the actions of the U.N. and pressure organizations to provide avenues to file claims against them for illegal actions and to obtain justice. Organizations such as the U.N. lose credibility when they fail to acknowledge their own mistakes and not attempt to provide solutions to problems they created.
Many Haitians today ask why the U.N. holds human rights abusers accountable for their actions when it does not hold itself to those same standards. To this day, cholera activists and members of the vast Haitian diaspora fight for an apology from the U.N. It is essential that we continue to discuss the events of 2010 because the U.N. has yet to compensate the families of the deceased. It is also critical to recognize that the U.N.’s systematic denial of accountability for the first six years has led to exacerbating conditions and a failure to prevent much of the damage they caused and save lives.
Farbstein tells the HPR that in order to truly help the people of Haiti, victims of cholera in Haiti should “get to participate in designing remedies… This is a basic human rights principle: that victims should be at the center of any kind of reparations or compensations process.” In not including Haitians in the conversation and not seeking to really understand their needs, the U.N. undermines the effectiveness and legitimacy of their organization.
Rather than accepting responsibility for their actions, the U.N.’s response to years of pressure, from lawsuits to protests and petitions, was to simply claim immunity in order to avoid being sued. For an organization that is ostensibly dedicated to the promotion of development and human rights, the cholera epidemic in Haiti was truly a blunder and a step in the wrong direction. Yet, what is perhaps more concerning is the U.N.’s failure to accept their wrongdoing and assist the hundreds of thousands of people affected.
Image: Wikipedia Commons / U.S. Navy