In Wake of Clinton's Cholera Admission, Haitians Demand 'Justice' from UN?

An admission earlier this week by Bill Clinton, former US President and now the United Nation's Special Envoy to Haiti, that it was UN soldiers who likely spurred a deadly cholera outbreak in the Caribbean nation was a welcome development for many Haitians. Since the epidemic, unleashed in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in 2010, the UN has consistently denied responsibility for introducing the deadly virus.

The path forward, according to international experts and health professionals, is for the international community, especially the United States, which brought the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) troops to Haiti, to take responsibility for the health crisis by taking a proactive role in rebuilding Haiti's water and sanitation infrastructure.

"The UN ignored warn­ings about the lethal impact that cholera would have in Haiti, and allowed human waste from its base to poi­son Haiti’s cen­tral river. The UN must now accept respon­si­bil­ity for the deaths it has caused,” said Mario Joseph, Man­ag­ing Attor­ney of the Bureau des Avo­cats Inter­na­tionaux (BAI). The BAI rep­re­sents over 5,000 vic­tims of cholera who filed claims with the UN, seek­ing nation­wide invest­ments in water and san­i­ta­tion infra­struc­ture, com­pen­sa­tion for the indi­vid­ual vic­tims, and a pub­lic apology.

“President Clinton’s acknowledgement, as a UN official, should bring us one step closer to the UN taking responsibility for what it has done, and fixing it.” said Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).