Earlier last week, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon traveled
to Haiti giving hope to the Haitian people and officials that the UN would
issue a long overdue apology for their role in introducing the cholera epidemic
in Haiti in the immediate aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake that
claimed 320,000 lives. After the usual diplomatic rounds were made, Ban showed
up an hour late to a scheduled press conference to meet with the Haitian press. After having waited an hour – or more
accurately four years since the beginning of the epidemic and the surfacing of the
evidence implicating the UN – Ban took two questions: one from a Haitian
journalist on cholera and another from an international reporter on Palestine. Haitian
journalists were outraged at his blatant avoidance of questioning on this hot
button issue. It was a public
relations disaster.
Since the outbreak, the UN has made every effort to cover up
their negligence and direct involvement in the scandal. Secretary Ban most recently felt the
pressure to acknowledge the UN role when lawyers for the Haitian victims served
him a subpoena in Manhattan on June 20. Since that time, he has been at pains
to find the right words to address the issue. The Secretary’s strategy seems to
hinge on dodging the issue and hoping it will go away. But it has not -- and will not - go
away until the UN takes responsibility.
UN Special Envoy to Haiti, President Bill Clinton, has
publicly admitted
the role of the UN in introducing the epidemic that has killed
8,000 and sickened more than 780,000.
The world’s most preeminent scientists and health officials have joined
President Clinton in his conclusion. The US Center for Disease Control concluded based
on the scientific evidence that the bacteria was not from Haiti but from South
Asia. Since then more than two dozen scientific and academic institutions,
including UCLA,
Yale
and the American
Society for Microbiology have shown conclusively that the UN Nepalese
soldiers were responsible.
Under pressure from the Haitian people, the Haitian
Government has been asking Secretary Ban to admit the UN moral responsibility
in the spread of the epidemic since 2011. Haitian officials extended the normal
diplomatic courtesies to the Secretary during this most recent trip, but were again
internally disappointed and frustrated by the Secretary’s failure to address
the issue in any meaningful way. President Martelly and Prime Minister Lamothe
are wading in very sensitive political waters: domestically they are under
extreme pressure from an enraged Haitian public to produce the elusive apology
from the UN; and internationally they are reliant on foreign aid to provide
even the basic needs of the country.
Far short of an apology, Secretary Ban said: “the UN has a
moral responsibility to help Haiti combat the epidemic”. Haiti’s largest
newspaper, the Nouvelliste, published an editorial
outlining the popular belief that Ban made the trip to get some nice words and
pictures on the record for his next report on Haiti to the UN Security Council.
More cynical commentators have conjectured that the UN refusal to admit
culpability for the epidemic is pure racism and another insult to the world’s
first black republic. For others, the resistance is simply a financial and
legal calculation. Haiti will need and estimated US$2.7 billion to eradicate
the epidemic.
On October 2010, Nepalese soldiers from the UN Peacekeeping
Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) carrying the cholera bacteria dumped their
excrement into the Mirebalais
River. That Mirebalais contamination spread to the Artibonite, the
second most populated administrative region of Haiti. The epidemic spread from
the Central Plateau to the Artibonite region and later to the entire
country.
Foreign reporters investigated the outbreak finding it
suspicious that the country had not seen cholera in more than 200 years. They collected physical proof of the
origin of the epidemic and published pictures
of trucks discharging excrement from the UN Nepalese base into the Mirebalais
River. Journalists actually filmed
the Nepalese soldiers frantically covering up the pipes that led directly from
their latrines into a canal that connected directly to a tributary of the
Artibonite River.
Covering up their role in this tragedy undermines the UN
charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and everything they stand
for. Fortunately, in this 24-hour news cycle, it is impossible to bury the
facts. This bacterium took an immense toll on a country with scarce resources
that were made even scarcer by one of the world’s most destructive earthquakes.
To address this issue, the UN has offered a pitifully insufficient
financial contribution, and it is barely meeting its goals.
Haitians believe in forgiveness and want good cooperation
with the United Nations. But it is time for Secretary Ban to put aside the
cover up strategy, acknowledge the facts and apologize to the Haitian people,
particularly the victims. He needs to convene Haiti’s partners and multilateral
institutions and develop a serious plan to help the Haitian government properly
address and eradicate the epidemic and the victims thereof.
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