Life
Will the UN face justice over the Haiti Cholera outbreak?
Mulet said that “it has not been proven that cholera was most probably brought in by Nepalese peacekeepers”. He also asserted that Nepalese peacekeepers had undergone the appropriate medical examinations ahead of their mission to Haiti, a claim contradicted by a UN-appointed panel of experts.
Shortly after the interview, Mulet’s press officer asked reporters not to air the recording.
Ban Ki-moon has also ignored requests for transparency on the issue. During a two-day trip to Haiti in July, reporters challenged the US Secretary General several times. Stressing that he was in the country “to bring a sense of hope and support,” Ban refused to answer questions concerning any potential apology or compensation to families of victims.
He was pictured meeting smiling locals and at dinner with Haitian President Michel Martelly and Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe. But beyond Ban’s security corps, a few dozen protesters gathered in the street holding banners, in both English and Korean, reading “Ban Ki-moon go home,” and “justice for the victims of cholera”.
Not everybody at the UN got the silence memo. Gustavo Gallon, a senior human rights expert who was appointed by the UN to report on the situation in Haiti, publicly disagreed with the body over its refusal to address the claims against it. “Silence is the worst of responses to a catastrophe caused by human action,” he said in March.
The UN Secretary General did not respond.
The UN has not ignored the epidemic itself. In December 2012, Ban pledged US$2.2 billion to efforts to wipe out cholera in Haiti through improved sanitation, one percent of which would come directly from the world body.
Pedro Medrano Rojas, the UN’s senior coordinator for the cholera response in Haiti, suggested in an interview with reporters in March this year that Ban’s “cholera implementation plan” and the UN’s attempts to gather funding for it was in fact a direct response to the thousands of legal complaints.
