Advocates for victims of the Haiti cholera epidemic filed a lawsuit against the United Nations on Wednesday.
Cholera has killed over 8,300 people and sickened over 650,000 since the epidemic broke out following the devastating earthquake in Haiti in 2010—an epidemic the suit charges “resulted from the negligent, reckless, and tortious conduct of the Defendants: the United Nations (“UN”); its subsidiary, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (“MINUSTAH”); and at least two of their officers.
Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, previously noted that
“The United Nations is the clearly the cause of the cholera,” Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans who’s also been active in human rights in Haiti for years, told Common Dreams.
Five Haitians and Haitian-Americans whose family members were killed or sickened by the disease are the plaintiffs and are seeking class-action in the suit, and are being represented the human rights groups Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH), and civil rights law firm Kurzban, Kurzban, Weinger, Tetzelli & Pratt (KKWT).
The victims “have rights to have a Court hear their case and rights to damages that will help them go on with their lives and access clean water,” Brian Concannon, director of IJDH and co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.
Victims have been struggling for years to get justice for the UN-caused epidemic that continues to kill 1,000 Haitians a year.
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In 2011, over 5,000 cholera victims issued the UN a petition demanding compensation and an apology for the deadly epidemic it brought to Haiti. In February of 2013, however, the UN rejected the victims’ claim, stating, “claims are not receivable.”
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