Life
U.N. will not face justice over the Haiti Cholera outbreak
Thousands of Haitians killed or sickened by a cholera epidemic that they blame on U.N. peacekeepers cannot sue the United Nations in a U.S. court because the U.N. has legal immunity that only it can waive, a U.S judge ruled.
In a decision Judge J. Paul Oetken of U.S. District Court in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit filed by human rights lawyers seeking compensation for the cholera victims.
A lawyer for the plaintiffs said they would appeal the ruling.
The outbreak has killed more than 8,600 people and infected over 707,000 since October 2010, according to the U.N.
Oetken wrote that the U.N.’s ability to block lawsuits was established by a 1946 international convention and was made clear again in a 2010 ruling from a U.S. appeals court in a case of alleged sex discrimination.
“The U.N. is immune from suit unless it expressly waives its immunity,” he wrote.
The U.N. did not expressly waive immunity for the Haitians and has not accepted responsibility for the outbreak, although it has tried to raise money for a cholera elimination campaign.
The plaintiffs plan to appeal Oetken’s ruling and show that their case is different from the 2010 case, said one of their lawyers, Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
