UN sued for introducing cholera to Haiti

FOR decades, Haiti was plagued by human-made and natural disasters. But for more than a century it had no cholera, which thrives where sanitation infrastructure is negligible and personal hygiene is poor.

The United Nations has been accused not only of introducing the disease to Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake of Jan 12, 2010, but of denying that it did. Will Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which has killed 8,000 people, become for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon what the ‘oil for food scandal’ was for his predecessor, Kofi Annan?

Ban was named as defendant in a lawsuit in a Manhattan federal court two weeks ago, on behalf of Haiti’s victims of cholera, which, according to studies, was introduced by UN peacekeepers. The UN has refused to accept responsibility. Lawyers from the Boston-based Institution for Justice and Development in Haiti (IJDH), which prepared the class action, attempted to serve papers, but the UN claimed the immunity afforded to international civil servants and world bodies.