Haiti: Leaked report reveals UN’s culpability regarding cholera outbreak

A leaked report has revealed that the United Nations (UN) found serious sanitation flaws in its Haiti peacekeeping mission just a month after the deadly cholera outbreak erupted, killing thousands in the country.

The report, which was commissioned in November 2010, found a series of shocking problems at several UN peacekeeping bases, including sewage being dumped out in the open and a disturbing lack of bathroom facilities.

The authors of the review, which was titled the MINUSTAH Environmental Health Assessment Report, warned UN leadership that failure to dispose of sewage safely at a time when the cholera epidemic was raging “will potentially damage the reputation of the mission.”

They also cautioned that the way the UN stabilization mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) had managed waste disposal and the poor oversight of contractors carrying out this work “has left the mission vulnerable to allegations of disease propagation and environmental contamination.”

Haiti had been cholera-free for at least 150 years until the epidemic started in October 2010.

The emergence of the internal UN review will add to pressure on the world body to face up to the role it played as the source of the cholera epidemic. The UN is currently facing a lawsuit from 1,500 Haitians who blame the world body for negligently allowing peacekeepers from Nepal to import the disease when they were relocated to Haiti to help with recovery efforts in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that the UN failed to screen the peacekeepers from Nepal for cholera, where the disease is common, and that a private contractor hired by the UN failed to ensure sanitary conditions and adequate infrastructure at the UN military camp in Mirebalais.

They allege that this led to sewage and other waste being pumped straight into the Meille river, a tributary of the Artibonite, Haiti’s biggest river.