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May 15, 2012

Dear Representative,

We, the undersigned organizations working for a sustainable and just recovery in Haiti, urge you to sign and support a letter sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI ) asking U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation Susan Rice to encourage the UN to take a leadership role in addressing the cholera epidemic in Haiti.  A “Dear Colleague” inviting members of Congress to sign on to this letter is included below.

The outbreak began in October 2010, ten months after Haiti’s tragic earthquake, and “has become one of the largest cholera epidemics in modern history”, according to the Pan American Health Organization. To date, at least 7,200 Haitians have died from the disease and more than 530,000 people have been infected. As Haiti’s population is less than ten million, more than 1 in 20 Haitians have already been infected.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that cholera will likely persist in Haiti absent the development of water and sanitation systems, the cost of which has been estimated at $800 million to $1.1 billion. On January 12, the presidents of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, joined by UN agencies the Pan American Health Organization, World Health Organization and UNICEF, and the CDC, appealed to donor countries to honor pledges and provide funds for water and sanitation infrastructure. However, there has been little response to this appeal from the international community.

We welcome recent Congressional efforts to address this issue.   A Congressional briefing on April 18 — “Cholera and the Human Right to Health in Post-Earthquake Haiti” – provided detailed information about the impact of cholera and the remedies needed to improve the situation such as increased treatment efforts and long-term infrastructure.

The letter calls upon the Ambassador to:

• Urge UN authorities to play a central role in addressing the cholera crisis by:
  • Helping ensure that resources are in place to provide adequate treatment and prevention of the disease in the short term; and
  • Taking the lead in helping Haiti and the rest of the island of Hispaniola acquire the necessary funding to develop the water and sanitation infrastructure needed to effectively control the cholera epidemic.
• Encourage UN authorities and all donor governments involved in the effort to fight cholera to intensify their cooperation with the Haitian state and people through capacity-building and the active inclusion of government representatives in decision-making and through the regular consultation of civil society actors.

Officials who are concerned about the cholera crisis in Haiti can send a powerful signal and make a difference by acting now.  If you wish to sign on you can do so by contacting Michael Darner in the office of Rep. John Conyers at Michael.Darner@mail.house.gov or extension 5126.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Sincerely,

ActionAid USA

American Jewish World Service

Bri Kouri Nouvèl Gaye

Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, UC Hastings College of the Law

Church World Service

Environmental Justice Initiative For Haiti

Gender Action

Global Justice Clinic

Government Accountability Project

Grassroots International

Haiti Fund at the Boston Foundation

Haiti Support Group

Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti

Just Foreign Policy

Let Haiti Live

Li, Li, Li! Read

Lutheran World Relief

Mennonite Central Committee US Washington Office

New Media Advocacy Project

Other Worlds

TransAfrica

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)

Help Alleviate the Haitian Cholera Crisis From: The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Sent By: michael.darner@mail.house.gov
Date: 5/7/2012

Dear Colleague:

Please join me in supporting efforts to address the cholera epidemic in Haiti by signing a letter to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice urging UN authorities to play a central role in addressing the crisis.

The cholera outbreak began in October 2010, ten months after Haiti’s tragic earthquake, and “has become one of the largest cholera epidemics in modern history” according to the Pan-American Health Organization.  To date, at least 7,200 Haitians have died from the disease and more than 530,000 people have been infected.

As cholera was brought to Haiti due to the actions of the UN, it is imperative for the UN to now act decisively to control the cholera epidemic. UN authorities should work with Haiti’s government and the international community to confront and, ultimately, eliminate this deadly disease from Haiti and the rest of the island of Hispaniola.  A failure to act will not only lead to countless more deaths: it will undermine the crucial effort to reconstruct Haiti and will pose a permanent public health threat to the populations of neighboring nations.

If you have any questions or would like to sign the letter, please contact Michael Darner in my office at michael.darner@mail.house.govor 3–3834.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Member of Congress

May XX, 2012

Dear Ambassador Rice,

We are writing to express our deep concern regarding the ongoing cholera epidemic in Haiti and to ask you to strongly encourage the United Nations to take a leadership role in addressing this catastrophic public health crisis.  The outbreak began in October 2010, ten months after Haiti’s tragic earthquake, and “has become one of the largest cholera epidemics in modern history” according to the Pan-American Health Organization.  To date, at least 7,200 Haitians have died fromthe disease and more than 530,000 people have been infected.  So as to ensure that this devastating disease is brought under control, we call on you to urge UN authorities to support efficient treatment and prevention of the epidemic and to help Haiti acquire adequate water and sanitation infrastructure.

As acknowledged by the UN’s Special Envoy to Haiti, former President Bill Clinton, UN troops introduced the cholera bacterium “into the waterways of Haiti, into the bodies of Haitians” and, as such, were the “proximate cause” of the epidemic.   We welcome your statement in March to the Secu­rity Coun­cil calling on the United Nationsto “redou­ble its efforts to pre­vent any fur­ther inci­dents of this kind and to ensure that those respon­si­ble are held accountable.”

As cholera was brought to Haiti due to the actions of the UN, we believe that it is imperative for the UN to now act decisively to control the cholera epidemic. UN authorities should work with Haiti’s government and the international community to confront and, ultimately, eliminate this deadly disease from Haiti and the rest of the island of Hispaniola.  A failure to act will not only lead to countless more deaths: it will undermine the crucial effort to reconstruct Haiti and will pose a permanent public health threat to the populations of neighboring nations.

According to the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), Haiti is one of the most underserved countries in the world in terms of water and sanitation infrastructure. These infrastructural weaknesses have made Haiti particularly susceptible to water-borne disease. Cholera had not been present in Haiti for over a century prior to October 2010, making Haitians ‘immunologically naïve’ and even more vulnerable to the disease.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has done a remarkable job in partnership with the Haitian government in distributing treatment supplies, providing treatment training, and establishing a national cholera surveillance system. The CDC estimates that cholera will likely persist in Haiti absent the development of water and sanitation systems, the cost of which has been estimated at $800 million to $1.1 billion.

On January 12thof this year, the presidents of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, joined by UN agencies PAHO, World Health Organization and UNICEF and the U.S. CDC, appealed to donor countries to honor pledges and provide funds for water and sanitation infrastructure.  However, there has been little response to this appeal from the international community.  Moreover, with the onset of the rainy season, the number of deaths from cholera is rising once again.

Accordingly, we call upon you to urge UN authorities to play a central role in addressing the cholera crisis.  First, by helping ensure that resources are in place to provide adequate treatment and prevention of the disease in the short term. Secondly, by taking the lead in helping Haiti and the rest of the island of Hispaniola acquire the necessary funding to develop the water and sanitation infrastructure needed to effectively control the cholera epidemic.

Finally, we ask that you encourage UN authorities and all donor governments involved in the effort to fight cholera to intensify their cooperation with the Haitian state and people through capacity-building and the active inclusion of government representatives in decision-making and through the regular consultation of civil society actors.

Sincerely,

Click HERE to Download the Letter in PDF Version
Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project   

By Michael Norby and Brian Fitzpatrick, The Irish Times

Recruits in Haiti’s self-declared army, which is seeking to manipulate the situation whereby the UN stabilisation mission in the country is viewed by many as an occupying force installed to entrench the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Armed group is waging a brazen campaign aimed at stoking public anger at the continued presence of the 10,000-strong UN mission in Haiti and inviting violent conflict with authorities, write MICHAEL NORBY and BRIAN FITZPATRICK in Port-au-Prince

In the overgrown parade grounds of a long-abandoned military base outside Port-au-Prince, the most recent player in the surreal battle for the hearts and minds of the Haitian people delivers a chilling message.

Flanked by 150 uniformed men, Larose Aubin seems ready to plunge the battered nation into utter chaos.

Aubin, an animated former army sergeant, speaks for a group of one-time soldiers and younger recruits calling for the immediate return of the Haitian Armed Forces (FAd’H), 17 years after the notoriously brutal military was scrapped.

The rogue movement began in earnest after the May 2011 inauguration of president Michel Martelly, who had made the army’s return a pillar of his election campaign.

When it became clear, however, that remobilisation would take several years and that the majority would not be included, the disgruntled group seized old army installations across the country and issued demands. Mocking government attempts to pay them off, they say the time for talk is over.

“We’re not joking around,” says Aubin. “We’re going to come with force and with the population, and we’ll get what we’re looking for. Even if we lose our lives, we will fight. They can’t kill us all.”

Well-armed and highly visible as they patrol the nation’s cities in military fatigues, the 3,000– strong group claims to be ready to bring peace and security to Haiti; a new army that should not be feared. However, the rhetoric of another former sergeant, Yves Jeudy, tells a different story, as he earmarks the upcoming Haitian Flag Day holiday as a deadline.

“After May 18th, if the government hasn’t done anything, they will see what happens,” he declares. “We’re not going back and they need to give us an answer quick.”

This final challenge comes after a brazen campaign aimed at stoking public anger at the continued presence of the 10,000-strong United Nations stabilisation mission in Haiti, which was put in place after the overthrow of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.

On April 19th, the group amplified its intentions as 50 men – some armed with grenades – arrived at parliament and disrupted a legislative session to ratify prime minister Laurent Lamothe.

No confrontation occurred but the inaction of the UN mission and the Haitian national police (PNH) was a major embarrassment. The ragtag army took full advantage of the impunity, and has now used the resulting traction and sense of legitimacy to invite a violent confrontation with authorities.

This cavalier approach is deliberate and seeks to manipulate the situation whereby the UN mission is viewed by many as an occupying force installed to entrench the 2004 coup against Aristide.

Shortly after their arrival, anger at the peacekeepers began to grow after violent incursions into the Port-au-Prince slums of Cité Soleil and Bel-Air, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties. Instances of abuse and extreme negligence have compounded matters. In March, for example, two Pakistani peacekeepers were convicted of the January 20th rape of a 14-year-old boy in the town of Gonaïves, and several similar claims have emerged.

IN OCTOBER 2010, Haiti suffered its first ever cholera outbreak. Since then 7,000 people have died and over half a million have become ill. Overwhelming evidence suggests that troops from Nepal brought the disease to Haiti, but the UN mission has yet to officially accept responsibility.

Against this backdrop, it’s understandable that some would favour the reinstatement of the dreaded army over “foreigners“, as Aubin claims they do. Wary that this hostility could ignite a public backlash, it’s likewise easy to see why the UN mission is reluctant to deploy chapter seven of the UN charter, which allows military action when peace is threatened.

Finally testing the waters last Sunday, however, a joint Haitian police/UN operation saw checkpoints set up in Port-au– Prince and other towns, and two armed men in military uniforms were arrested. These were the first detentions since the armed gangs began patrolling cities. The move was a subtle response, aimed at both sending a message to the army camps and gauging the public’s reaction, yet it signals the opening of a potentially dangerous new chapter.

“Our goal remains to support the PNH to disarm those in possession of illegal firearms,” said UN mission spokesman Lt Cmdr Jim Hoeft, offering an ambiguous explanation of the arrests.

Though Hoeft declined to discuss exactly when a decision was made to begin flexing muscles, he did say that UN troops were “always ready for actions like these” and that “some operations are predetermined, some are based on operational observations”.

The mood of the people will most likely dictate the strategy of both sides as the situation begins to boil. With atrocious social conditions prevalent and the country’s fledgling democracy apparently bludgeoned into submission, for some, what has been referred to as “option chaos” may look more and more appealing.

ONLY A year in office, Martelly has lurched from one crisis to the next. Lamothe was installed as prime minister last week, the president’s fourth choice for the job after lawmakers rejected two earlier nominees. Gary Conille was approved for the role in October, but resigned after just four months after his plan to audit reconstruction contracts drew the ire of the president.

Martelly’s election victory itself was soiled by the forced exclusion of Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, and a dismal turnout of just 24 per cent. The technicality used by Haiti’s electoral council to exclude the party was that it had submitted improper documents.

To put into perspective what this expulsion meant: In December 1990, Aristide was elected with 67 per cent of the vote under the banner of the Lavalas movement. In December 1995, another Lavalas candidate, René Préval, was elected with 88 per cent of the vote.

By then representing Fanmi Lavalas – which had emerged from a split in the movement – Aristide was re-elected in November 2000 with a 92 per cent total. Finally, in February 2006, Préval won 51 per cent of votes, also backed by Fanmi Lavalas.

In short, though it is accepted that each election result since 1990 has grown steadily more unreliable, the broader Lavalas movement has clearly served as the voice of the Haitian poor for over two decades. Now, in a country where 80 per cent of the population lives on $2 or less a day, it appears that this platform does not fit the post-earthquake landscape.

“The people no longer believe that Haiti will have the opportunity to have a democracy,“ said Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

“Their options are now local gangs, the UN, the return of the army, or some kind of clientelism relationship with the government. That’s what they think is realistic.“

In the face of criticism from western diplomats and with a dubious mandate, Martelly’s plans to create a 3,500-strong army has evoked memories of the Haitian Armed Forces and its dreaded Tonton Macoutes death squads, used by the decades-long Duvalier dictatorships to crush dissent.

In more recent times, Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti paramilitaries helped Gen Raoul Cédras’s military junta – which overthrew the first Aristide government – kill an estimated 3,000 people between 1991 and 1994.

MARTELLY CLAIMS the force is needed to deal with border security and help his struggling police, but critics say there are far more pressing issues facing the nation. Either way, the half-hearted attempts to disarm the “soldiers” has led to widespread speculation in Haiti, including theories that question the president’s true intentions. Others cite political opportunists or outside interests as possible benefactors of the impending chaos.

The group has new trucks and uniforms, and enough fuel and provisions to sustain a prolonged standoff; clearly someone of influence is pulling the strings.

Georges Michel, a member of the commission appointed by Martelly to blueprint the army’s return, says the possibility of this crisis materialising was forecast to the president in a January 1st report, and fears the consequences of inaction may be severe.

“The people are with them,“ he said of the holdouts. “This would be a major catastrophe for Martelly if he calls upon Minustah [UN mission] to crack down on them – they will be seen as heroes and Martelly as the villain.“

In Gonaïves, a three-hour drive north of Port-au-Prince, witnesses to the brutality of the Haitian military are not so sympathetic. We’re in the seaside slum of Raboteau where, at around 4am on April 22nd, 1994, over 100 FAd’H soldiers and their Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti paramilitary henchmen attacked unsuspecting residents, leaving an estimated 26 to 50 people dead.

From the edge of the village, we walk past the stagnant orange-tinged salt mines to the shoreline — the same 300-yard route many of the victims thought would take them to safety exactly 18 years ago. The horror is fresh in the memories of the 12 survivors who accompany us; their stories a chilling reminder of an obscene barbarism.

“The victims were men and women, girls and boys,” recalls Henry-Claude Elismé. “Some of the dead were eaten by pigs and wild dogs. We don’t really know how many died in total because the army stayed for days, digging holes, dumping bodies on top of each other.”

RABOTEAU, SEEN as a pro-democracy safe haven, was punished for its opposition to the Cédras junta, which was barely clinging to power in the face of international isolation. Troops burst into houses as people slept, beating and torturing some and gunning down anyone who ran.

Those who survived the blind sprint to the sea leapt into fishing boats for the safety of the ocean, only to be slaughtered by troops positioned in 13 small boats just offshore. They then used the next several days to cover their tracks.

The Cédras regime fell soon after, as did the FAd’H, which Aristide disbanded upon being reinstated after US intervention. In Raboteau, at least, the victims of one of the final atrocities of the army are under no illusions about what a new force would mean.

In Port-au-Prince, where 420,000 people made homeless by the 2010 earthquake still live in horrendous tent cities, impatience is growing. Cholera cases have tripled since the rainy season began a month ago, and access to fresh water or healthcare is sparse. Much of the capital remains a trash-filled wasteland of broken buildings where malnutrition kills and violence is spiralling out of control.

Irwin Stotzky, author of Silencing the Guns in Haiti, served as an adviser to presidents Aristide and Préval and investigated the human rights abuses of the Cédras regime. He says the thought of throwing 3,500 armed men at this problem is obscene.

“The idea that they need an army in the middle of all this is ridiculous,“ he says. “What they need is an educational system, a governmental structure, food, housing.

“Who are they going to fight?“ he asks. “The Haitian army has never fought anybody but Haitians.”

Click HERE to See the Original Article 

 

Editorial, The New York Times

The cholera epidemic in Haiti, which began in late 2010, is bad and getting worse, for reasons that are well understood and that the aid community has done far too little to resolve. A chronic lack of access to clean water and sanitation make Haitians vulnerable to spreading sickness, especially as spring rains bring floods, as they always do. Summer hurricanes are bound to come; more misery and death will follow. The Pan American Health Organization has said the disease could strike 200,000 to 250,000 people this year. It has already killed more than 7,000.

Doctors Without Borders said this month that the country is unprepared for this spring’s expected resurgence of the disease. Nearly half the aid organizations that had been working in the rural Artibonite region, where this epidemic began and 20 percent of cases have been reported, have left, the organization said. “Additionally, health centers are short of drugs and some staff have not been paid since January.”

It gets worse: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report this month that cholera in Haiti was evolving into two strains, suggesting the disease would become much harder to uproot and that people who had already gotten sick and recovered would be vulnerable again.

The United Nations bears heavy responsibility for the outbreak: its own peacekeepers introduced the disease through sewage leaks at one their encampments. Before that, cholera had not been seen in Haiti for more than a hundred years. But the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for Haiti, Nigel Fisher, admitted in an interview on May 3 that “what we are doing is sort of patchwork, Band-Aid work on a fundamental problem.” While two nongovernmental organizations began a vaccination program last month in Port-au-Prince, it is only a trial that will protect a tiny part of the population. It is a worthy effort that will save lives, but not a substitute for basic water and sanitation.

A letter circulating in Congress calls on Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, to urge the world body to fully commit to eliminating cholera from the island of Hispaniola. The C.D.C. estimates that adequate water and sanitation systems will cost $800 million to $1.1 billion, a sum that can surely be wrested from the billions that nations have pledged to Haiti, though contributions have flagged as attention to the crisis has faded.

The Congressional letter echoes a demand from the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, a human rights group that has sued the United Nations on behalf of 5,000 cholera victims. The U.N. and the international community have a responsibility to meet the crisis head-on. There are pledges to fulfill, dollars to deliver and lives to save.

Click HERE To See the Original Article
Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

By Matthew Russell Lee, Inner City Press

UNITED NATIONS, May 13 — While the UN continues to deny that it introduced cholera to Haiti, or claims that “it doesn’t matter” who introduced it, today’s New York Times in an unsigned editorial states flatly that “the UN bears heavy responsibility for the outbreak: its own peacekeepers introduced the disease through sewage leaks at one of their encampments.”

We’ll see if the UN continues to reflexively send denial letters to the editor (below, there’s the UN system’s response to a finding of its corruption in Afghanistan, defending its 10-seater sofa set and $800 shredder).

But the Times editorial on Haiti goes on to recite that the “CDC estimates that adequate water and sanitation systems will cost $800 million.”

The editorial doesn’t directly say, but Inner City Press has reported, that this is the annual budget the UN spends on soldiers in Haiti, which has not seen a war for years.

Back on April 10, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman about this:

Inner City Press: yesterday, there was a press conference across the street by Haitian activists, including human rights activists and those who filed the claim for compensation with MINUSTAH and the Secretary-General. And, among other things, they said that they have heard nothing back from this UN, at any level, since December.… Since it has been four months and there have been new developments, is there a time line? What’s the UN’s thinking about this issue, because they are saying that it is hurting the credibility of the UN with Haitians and others?

Spokesperson Martin Nesirky: Two things, Matthew. One is that, as we have repeatedly said, a claim has been received and it is being studied. There is nothing unusual in the time frame for studying a claim of this nature. The second point is that the focus is on what we can do to help the Haitian people now, and, of course, in the run-up to the rainy season, which is to come. So, I think that the focus is rightly on the need to help people now and to ensure that sanitation measures are put in place before the rainy season and during the rainy season. On the first part of the question, the answer remains the same.

Inner City Press: Mario Joseph, a very widely respected Haitian human rights lawyer, makes this comparison of the $800 million a year they say is spent on MINUSTAH peacekeeping, they say if this money was actually devoted to water purification, it would change Haitians’ lives. Is that the real number? Is there some way to get a comparison of what the UN spends in Haiti on just what you are saying, sanitation, water and forward-looking preventative measures as opposed to this peacekeeping force?

Spokesperson Nesirky: I think that we’ll be in a position to provide you and others with an overview of precisely the kind of measures that are being taken, and have been taken since the outbreak began. And obviously that is our focus. Progress has been made in reducing the number of cases, but there is a long way to go and that is precisely why the focus needs to be there. Let’s see if we can come up with something that gives you a good snapshot of where we are. Other questions, please?

And more than a month later, still no response to the formal claim on cholera.

On May 11, Inner City Press asked about corruption in Afghanistan:

Question: On Afghanistan? There is a report that the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee, the Afghan Government, and the international donors have said that the UN system’s role in funding the Afghan national police may involve false receipts, what is the UN system’s response? Does it believe that there are problems with the program or that everything is running well?

Spokesperson: Seen the story; speak to UNDP [United Nations Development Programme]. Thanks very much.

And here’s from the response UNDP put out, and the UN sent to Inner City Press:

UNDP has a zero tolerance policy towards any form of mismanagement or corruption for its entire country program in Afghanistan. Your article refers to the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA), which is part of our program and helps increase security by training the Afghan National Police—including through payment of salaries. It is audited every year by a globally respected and independent third party auditing firm.

A financial audit recently conducted by KPMG of the 2011 project’s expenditure concluded that there were no financial irregularities. In addition, a comprehensive evaluation of the previous LOTFA phase, also conducted by an external evaluation firm, found no cause for concern.

UNDP notes with concern a statement in your report, which describes a “pattern of bad behavior” at LOTFA – comments you have attributed to an anti-corruption body set up by the Afghan government, the Monitoring and Evaluation Committee. However, their report was released the day before your article was published and makes no reference to “bad behavior”. It does recommend improved oversight and monitoring and UNDP is committed to diligently following up on this.

Moreover, we would like to set the record straight on the following additional allegations in your piece:

1/ For example, a 10-seater sofa set and four tables costing $6,000 — which the article refers to as “luxury furniture” that might not even have been purchased – were procured with full procedural checks and are still being used by the head of the Afghan Border Police.

2/ The purchase order of a paper shredder, mentioned in your report, matched its $800 price. The purchase was in line with our procurement policy and was only approved after the project justified its need for a more robust product..

Yours truly, Satinder Bindra, Director of Communications — UNDP

So why the long — if factually challenged — response to the WSJ about Afghanistan, including 10-seater sofa set and “robust” $800 shredder? Especially when compared with the still total silence from the UN on the Haiti cholera claim and belated NYT story and editorial?

A range of possibilities, call them multiple choice:

a) The UN cares more about, or is more afraid of exposure of its misdeeds in, Afghanistan than Haiti because the US and other powers cares about Afghanistan. (The NYT on Haiti references a Congressional move to direct Susan Rice to act, but the UN’s responsibility for cholera introduction has yet to be acted on.)

b) The UN is more worried about the WSJ than the NYT, which it views as a liberal paper tiger.

c) UNDP is more media savvy than Ban Ki-moon’s Secretariat.

Click HERE to See The New York Times Article
Click HERE to See the Original Article
Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned on Wednesday that not enough has been done to prepare for the rainy season and the corresponding surge in cholera that is expected. The international humanitarian organization stated:

While Haiti’s Ministry of Health and Populations claims to be in control of the situation, health facilities in many regions of the country remain incapable of responding to the seasonal fluctuations of the cholera epidemic. The surveillance system, which is supposed to monitor the situation and raise the alarm, is still dysfunctional, MSF said. The number of people treated by MSF alone in the capital, Port-au-Prince, has quadrupled in less than a month, reaching 1,600 cases in April.

Data from the Ministry of Health (MSPP) backs up this increase noted by MSF. While the average daily case load reported by the MSPP was around 50 throughout March and early April, in the last two weeks of reporting (April 10-23) the average number of daily cases has increased to over 150. MSPP reports that 25 people have died due to cholera through in the first 23 days of April. While these numbers are still lower than last year, they point to an increasing caseload as the rainy season begins. Last year, just as cases were spiking, many NGOs were winding down their operations as donors pulled funding. MSF notes that the same phenomenon may be occurring this year as well:

“Too little has been done in terms of prevention to think that cholera would not surge again in 2012,” said Gaëtan Drossart, MSF head of mission in Haiti. “It is concerning that the health authorities are not better prepared and that they cling to reassuring messages that bear no resemblance to reality. There are many meetings going on between the government, the United Nations and their humanitarian partners, but there are few concrete solutions,” he said.

An MSF study in the Artibonite region, where approximately 20 percent of cholera cases have been reported, has revealed a clear reduction of cholera prevention measures since 2011. More than half of the organizations working in the region last year are now gone. Additionally, health centers are short of drugs and some staff have not been paid since January.

“Rain is just one of the risk factors for contamination. But as soon as the rains end, cholera subsides, and funding stops until the next rainy season, instead of money being channeled towards cholera prevention activities. As a consequence, people are still highly vulnerable when cholera comes back,” said Maya Allan, MSF epidemiologist.

Read more...

An article by Tate Watkins in The American Interest attempts to explain some of the reasons why, as the title puts it, Haiti’s rebuilding “is…taking so long?”

Among the factors Watkins details are the often quick staff turn-overs at NGO’s and agencies, the differing priorities of foreign NGO’s and agencies versus those of Haitian organizations and the Haitian government, the disproportionately tiny number of contracts going to Haitian contractors, and bureaucratic hurdles. Watkins also focuses on what he sees as another key factor, and one that is less-often mentioned in the media (and which indeed may be much less-often noticed by foreign journalists): foreign aid workers and contractors’ disconnect from the local people where they work.

Many foreign organizations prohibit staff from traveling through certain areas of Port-au-Prince, or they’re forbidden to visit without an SUV with locked doors and windows, a local driver, and a security detail. Private security companies and insurance policies often dictate such travel guidelines. Offices and housing for foreign NGOs and aid agencies working in Haiti are concentrated in Pétion-Ville, an affluent section of the capital home to classy hotels and vibrant restaurants. But the concentration of expats also presents a cluster of targets for crime; the relatively upscale area can be just as dangerous as many other parts of the city. In March 2010, for example, two Swiss employees of the NGO Doctors Without Borders were kidnapped in Pétion-Ville after a night on the town and held for one week. The organization would not disclose whether it paid a ransom for their release.

[Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods co-founder Sasha] Kramer says many of the security measures that foreign organizations take actually increase risks for aid workers, because the restrictions hinder international staff’s ability to forge relationships with locals and build community ties—further hampering their ability to work effectively and efficiently.

She describes it from locals’ point of view: “You come into my neighborhood and you’re already afraid of me? Well, that’s offensive. So I think it engenders a feeling immediately of sort of defensiveness in communities, understandably.” And aid projects suffer as well. She says that she’s sensed tremendous frustration among international employees working with large NGOs who feel disconnected from the people they’re here trying to help.

Read more...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 10, 2012

Contact:
Brian Concannon, Jr., Esq., Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, brian@ijdh.org, +1–617-652‑0876 (English, French, Creole)
Mario Joseph, Av., Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, (in Haiti), mario@ijdh.org, +509‑3701-9879
(Creole, French, English)

Human Rights Groups Commend UN for Acknowledging
Limitations of “Band-Aid” Approach to Haiti Cholera

Thursday, May 10, 2012, Port-au-Prince, Haiti and Boston, USA—Rights groups in Haiti and the United States commend last week’s acknowledgment by United Nations official Nigel Fisher that the current efforts to alleviate cholera in Haiti are “patchwork, band-aid work on a fundamental problem.”  Fisher, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Haiti, acknowledged in a May 3rd interview with the UN News Centre that “What we are doing in the short-term … is necessary, but we all agree that the long-term solution is investment in improved drinking water sources and in waste management.”

“Mr. Fisher’s statement is a strong step in the right direction towards a sustainable response to the UN cholera epidemic,” said Brian Concannon Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and an attorney on a case filed by 5,000 cholera victims against the UN last November.  He added, “Now the UN needs to take responsibility for its harmful actions and actually start installing the comprehensive water and sanitation infrastructure that is the only long-term solution to the cholera epidemic.”

Numerous studies, including a report by the UN’s Independent Panel of Experts, establish that UN peacekeepers introduced cholera into Haiti in October 2010. The epidemic is now the world’s worst. It has killed over 7,200 people and sickened over 530,000.  Mr. Fisher warned that the epidemic could infect as many as 200,000 people in 2012 alone.  UN agencies estimate the cost of controlling the epidemic by installing comprehensive clean water and sanitation in Haiti at $746 million — $1.1 billion.

“Of course the UN can afford to pay for permanent solutions to cholera,” said Mario Joseph, Director of Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, and the lead attorney on the case against the UN.  “If the UN shortened the peacekeeping mission’s mandate by just one year, that would save $800 million.  Fewer ‘boots on the ground’ and more wells in the ground would save tens of thousands of lives every decade.  That is peace keeping.”

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Recueilli par Sylvain Mouillard 

Dans le bidonville Cité de Dieu, à Port-au-Prince, en mars 2012 (Photo Swoan Parker. Reuters)

Le choléra est de retour en Haïti. Avec le début imminent de la saison des pluies, l’épidémie réapparaît. Thierry Goffeau, chef de mission de MSF France sur l’île, alerte sur un phénomène récurrent, qui a touché 535 000 personnes depuis deux ans et en a tué 7 000.

Les premiers chiffres dont vous disposez témoignent-ils d’une aggravation par rapport à l’an dernier ?

La semaine passée, on a traité dans nos centres 935 cas de choléra, contre 500 l’année dernière à la même période. Mais c’est aussi dû au fait que beaucoup d’organisations internationales ont quitté Haïti et que les financements sont en baisse. Du coup, les patients se tournent davantage vers nous. On peut aussi noter que le taux de létalité est en hausse : il était de 2,23 pour 100 cas en 2010, il est supérieur à 3 cette année.

L’épidémie avait déjà frappé Haïti en 2011. Comment expliquer que la situation se réédite cette année ?

Il y a eu un manque de préparation des autorités durant la saison sèche. Le choléra est tombé dans l’oubli. Pourtant, les facteurs de risque sont toujours présents, et ont même augmenté. Le choléra se transmet via les matières fécales infectées, et notamment par le biais de l’eau. Or, dans les camps de déplacés, les latrines ne sont plus vidées ! Le taux de défécation à l’air libre est passé de 38% à 50%. L’accès à l’eau propre, au savon, ou encore au chlore est insuffisant. Pourtant, le choléra est facile à soigner s’il est pris en charge assez tôt. Il faut simplement réhydrater le patient avec des solutions toutes faites. En revanche, si on tarde, le malade peut être tué en quelques heures, après des diarrhées liquides et des vomissements.

Aucune leçon de l’an passé n’a donc été retenue ?

Si, des choses ont été faites, notamment au niveau de la sensibilisation. Il faut savoir que le choléra n’existait pas en Haïti avant le séisme de 2010. Désormais, les gens savent ce qu’est le choléra, et comment s’en protéger. Mais s’ils n’ont pas de savon ou d’aquatab, ces petites pilules de chlore qu’on plonge dans l’eau pour la nettoyer, ça ne sert à rien. En fait, il y a un manque criant de financements. Les salaires des staffs dans les centres de traitement ne sont plus versés. Si on continue comme ça, on va droit à la catastrophe.

De combien ont diminué les financements versés par les Nations unies et les bailleurs de fonds ?

Sur le volet eau et assainissement, 35 millions de dollars [27 millions d’euros, ndlr] avaient été demandés en 2012 au titre d’un appel de fonds coordonnée par les Nations Unies pour l’ensemble de ses partenaires humanitaires [dont MSF ne fait pas partie, ndlr]. Pour l’heure, seuls 4,3 millions de dollars ont été trouvés. C’est largement insuffisant. Même topo pour le volet santé : 2,5 millions de dollars ont été reçus sur les 33,5 millions demandés.

Une campagne de vaccination a été lancée par l’ONG PIH. Cela va-t-il dans le bon sens ?

Oui, cela permet d’ouvrir les esprits à la vaccination. Mais il faudrait que ce soit encore plus massif pour être efficace. Cela suppose de l’argent, du savoir-faire, des doses de vaccin… Néanmoins, il ne faut pas se réfugier derrière la vaccination : l’action principale, c’est de travailler sur l’eau et la sanitation.

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Click HERE  To See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

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CEPR Researcher Jake Johnston wrote in the Caribbean Journal yesterday:

In the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, donors pledged billions of dollars for reconstruction efforts. With those dollars was a commitment to “build back better”; this time was supposed to be different from previous big aid campaigns. But so far less than half of donor pledges have been disbursed, and it has become clear that “building back better” remains nothing more than a slogan. While there clearly have been successes in Haiti since the earthquake and the hard work of thousands of aid workers shouldn’t be discounted, nearly half-a-million remain homeless and hundreds of thousands more are living in desperate conditions. With a visible lack of results and little hard data with which to assess progress, one question naturally arises: “where did the money go?” At the Center for Economic and Policy Research and together with many other organizations, we’ve been trying to track where exactly the money that did get spent, went. It hasn’t been easy. 

To be sure, aid projects shouldn’t be judged solely on what percent of an aid budget went to overhead, or how much went to American consultants or was spent on American products as opposed to Haitian consultants and products. Ideally, the effectiveness of projects should be based on their outcomes, not just on the breakdown of how funds are spent. But measuring outcomes often isn’t feasible. A nominally independent review of the U.S. government’s response in Haiti attempted to measure the quality and impact of aid, but “a disquieting lack of data on baselines against which to measure progress or even impact” prevented them from doing so.

As taxpayers, we have the right to know how our tax dollars are being used and if they are used effectively.  Specifically, this means looking at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which has spent well over a billion dollars in Haiti since 2010.  To their credit, it’s not difficult to obtain the first level of transparency: to which organizations USAID gave funds.  USAID factsheets reveal that close to 100 percent of humanitarian funds for Haiti were channeled through NGOs, U.N. agencies or right back to other U.S. government agencies. Included in this billion-plus dollars hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts which have gone overwhelmingly to “beltway bandits” -- firms located in D.C., Maryland or Virginia. Only 0.02% by our latest tally has gone to Haitian firms.

But this isn’t the end of the line when it comes to transparency.  Once funds are given to an organization, what are they spent on? What were they meant to achieve? How much goes back to the U.S. and how much goes to local firms? In a meeting last October in Port-au-Prince a USAID official defended the awarding of contracts to so-called “beltway bandits”, telling me that while certainly some money goes off the top for their profits, much gets spent in country or is given to local subcontractors. It was a back-of-the-envelope calculation, but he estimated that each international worker sent to Haiti could cost up to $250,000 a year.  The important part, he stressed, was that this money would be spent in Haiti on electricity, security, housing, etc. “He has to live here, eat here, dance here, whatever,” the official reasoned. Read the rest here.

Click HERE to Listen to the Whole Radio  (Interview begins at 12:25)

Below is a transcription of the second half of the interview in which Directors David and Bryn discuss the chronology of the outbreak and the UN role.

Dick Gordon: David, you were saying a couple of moments ago that the cholera outbreak was “a scandal” and that the death of Joseph’s mother kind of brought that forward. A scandal in what way?

David: It’s a scandal in the sense that it was a manmade catastrophe. It was accidentally brought to Haiti by the Nepalese peacekeeping troops whose base was located on the banks of one of Haiti’s largest rivers. I say accidentally, but it could have very well been avoided had they not been dumping their raw sewage in the river. When cholera first broke out, no one knew what it was, and then tests confirmed it was cholera. So then people were starting to ask, “Well, how did this happen? Cholera hasn’t been in Haiti. Where did it come from?” And then very quickly, I don’t know exactly who it was, but certainly some journalists started to do some investigations and they tracked the flow of the river and they worked out that it was very likely that it was coming from this Nepalese peacekeeper base. And then the scientists jumped onboard and started testing the water…

Bryn: …and the tests confirmed that it was a Himalayan strain of cholera that was found primarily in Nepal, and this was months after a cholera outbreak in Katmandu that cholera showed up in Haiti.

David: …and so it’s a scandal in the sense that it should have never come to Haiti. You know, the United Nations have their own environmental standards. They stand for human rights. They should have tested their own peacekeepers, or at least not dumped their sewage into a river; it’s just absolutely ridiculous. And so, you know, we knew it was the United Nations almost immediately after the outbreak. All fingers were pointing at the UN, and so there was an expectation that the UN was going to do something about it. But they never have, and still to this day they deny responsibility…

Dick: They deny responsibility?

David: Absolutely. I mean they themselves commissioned a report looking into the origins of the outbreak, and even that report points to the fact that it was very likely it was the Nepalese soldiers. But still, they skirted around responsibility by saying, “Well, if Haitian infrastructure hadn’t been so weak, and they had access to water and sanitation, then this wouldn’t have been such a disaster.”

Dick: One of the characters in your film is a Haitian lawyer who goes around and gathers stories of people who have lost friends or relatives to the cholera outbreak. Do they stand a chance, the Haitians, in doing anything to bring the UN’s feet to the fire on this, or is that part of the story in effect over?

Bryn: Oh, I hope that’s not other. Yeah, I think that those voices will be heard, and Mario Joseph whom you mentioned from the film works for the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, which is an incredible human rights organization, and they’re on the case. And we hope that that’s a hopeful moment in the film to see Mario working so hard, and you know Mario never sleeps and is a complete inspiration to us and a hero to us. And you know, we have to be hopeful and we have to be optimistic that these stories won’t just become statistics in a forgotten environmental scandal in, you know, decades from now [my emphasis]. This is a moment where the people who traditionally have had no voice, you know, or who have remained unheard, have an opportunity now to get their voices out loud and clear. And the hope is, potentially, that the United Nations will change how it does business around the world, and change how its peacekeepers behave around the world. And no longer is it okay to just not have proper sanitation, not have proper toilets, and so you know, we hope…

Dick: …and your young friend Joseph, the little baseball player who improbably says, “I love my life.” Uh, how is he doing?

Bryn: He’s great. He’s strong and he struggles, and he misses his mom a lot, and he talks to us a lot about it. And he’s surviving, and you know, he’s still in school everyday, he still plays baseball, he still plays with his friends. He’s got his head up. He studies hard, and you know, his friends in Toronto promised him to help him get into any university he wants, so he’s working hard for that.

David: …he’s on Facebook. [Laughter] Yeah, he’s a normal kid.

Dick: So you’re saying he’ll become a part of whatever Haiti becomes.

David: Yeah.

Dick: The UN convened an independent panel to study the cause of the cholera outbreak. Their final report said the following, that “the Haiti cholera outbreak was caused by the confluence of circumstances, and was not the deliberate fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual.” The Haitians strongly disagree with that and they are still pursuing legal action against the UN. You can find out more about David and Bryn’s film “Baseball in the Time of Cholera.” We have the links on our website…

Click HERE to Listen to the Whole Radio  (Interview begins at 12:25)
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project  

Yesterday, Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz of the Center for Global Development provided a nice overview of the U.S government’s review of its Haiti earthquake response. Ramachandran and Walz found that while the review includes “some frank and enlightening assessments of USG [U.S. government] response and coordination” it contained “very little discussion of aid accountability.”

As Ramachandran and Walz point out, the authors of the review couldn’t determine the effectiveness or impact of aid because of a “disquieting lack of data.” Part of the problem seems to stem from how data collection and management is viewed by aid workers and USG employees, who made up the vast majority of sources for the review. The report states:

During the Haiti response, limitations related to information management followed two major lines. First, there were limited data available for tactical and operational decisions; and second, there were overwhelming requests for data and information from policy leaders in Washington that made systematic data collection more difficult. These demands were often driven by reports in the media.

Thankfully, the authors note that at least “some” of those they interviewed understood that the former led to the latter: limited availability of data was what generated the “overwhelming” number of requests. Others told the authors that requests for information “detracted from the on-ground response” as they were forced to “’chase down’ facts.”

Of course, data is important to the on-the-ground response as well, as the report points out:

Data collection, through surveys and assessments, is an essential component for managing a disaster response. Surveys and assessments are used to identify the needs of the affected population to direct the response. Ideally, these types of data can be used to measure the overall impact of the humanitarian response.

Read more...

By Cynthia Ellis, The Huffington Post

Filmmakers Bryn Mooser and David Darg with Producer Olivia Wilde. Portrait by Leslie Hassler.

When Olivia Wilde comes into the studio, and sits down, her light-green cat’s eyes settle on you with a steady gaze and a mix of curiosity, intelligence, and sensuality. When she speaks about the people of Haiti, her face flushes with tenderness. Her voice is low, measured, and always just a moment away from a throaty laugh. She goes to Haiti often, despite its current cholera epidemic, and is planning another trip shortly after our talk.

Olivia’s career is in a thrilling “Wilde brush fire” phase. After roles on The O.C. and The Black Donellys, she was chosen to play the character nicknamed “13” on HOUSE, opposite Hugh Laurie, starred in Cowboys & Aliens with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, TRON: Legacy with Jeff Bridges and Michael Sheen, and currently has six films in post-production. Wilde truly loves Haiti, believes in the cause she speaks for and lends her whole self, not just, as many celebrities do, her name. Her beauty is complete, both inner and outer.

Olivia has teamed up with friends and fellow visionaries David Darg and Bryn Mooser to produce their film, Baseball in the Time of Cholera. What started out as a film about Haiti’s first little league team, a small and personal story, soon took on international importance as a cholera epidemic quickly infected over 500,000 Haitian people.

And the story became even larger. At first it was uncertain what was causing the deadly and quickly spreading illness — Haiti had never before suffered from cholera — but it soon came to light that the Nepalese troops with the UN peacekeeping force had allegedly been dumping their sewage into the largest river in Haiti.

The irony is starkly painful: the UN has a budget of $800 million to help keep peace in a country that hasn’t seen a war in over 50 years, but it is widely believed that as a direct result of the UN’s actions, thousands of innocent civilians are now dying from a cholera outbreak.

The film begins on an intimate level, showing us Haiti’s first little league team. We see the excitement of the boys, the happiness on their beautiful faces, and a genuine love of the game, just like little boys all over the world. But before long, the innocence of a child’s love of sports is interrupted by the only outbreak of cholera Haiti has ever seen. And very quickly, it is rampant and dire. The victims are living by a huge river, but none of it is safe to ingest, and these people are literally dying of thirst. It is tragically reminiscent of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to drink.”

When the film begins, we meet our 14 year-old baseball team pitcher Joseph, who says proudly, “I love my life,” a statement he’s so passionate about that he has actually written it on his wall. Surprising news, given that he’s taking us on a tour of the tent he lives in with 11 other people, with a single cement latrine, ever since the earthquake. Joseph is happily displaying for us why his life is beautiful, and the reason is that he still has the people he loves most around him: his parents, and sisters, Cindy and Lovely.

Eventually there comes a moment in the film where we see that Joseph’s face has changed entirely. His mother has died violently, and in a matter of days, of cholera. And, immediately, we know two things: the first is that even though he’s only 14, he’s no longer a boy; his childhood has ended abruptly and forever. And the second thing we know is that he may never write down the phrase “I love my life” again. Or at least not for very long time. It’s absolutely devastating.

As Joseph, who is technically still a child, (his favorite object is a little baseball statuette from Toronto) talks about how much he knows his mother loved him, and how hard she worked making jewelry to keep their family afloat, his grief overtakes him. And even though he’s trying so bravely to hold them back, he gives in to hardened sobs, right there in front of the camera. It’s impossible to watch, and not sit there and cry with him.

There is an enormous lawsuit led by human rights lawyer Mario Joseph against the UN for their alleged responsibility in the cholera outbreak for hundreds of thousands of Haitian victims. But how do you make reparations to the dead?

Bryn and David, how long have you two been living in Haiti?

Bryn: David came before me, I think two days after the earthquake. And I came about a month after the earthquake, and we’ve been there full-time ever since. Long enough to get frequent visits from Olivia.

When was the moment that you realized you had stumbled upon a truth that you needed to share with the world? That this was no longer just about baseball?

Olivia: I produced their film last year, and when they formed the little league baseball team, I said, “I want to be a part of whatever you guys do with this.” A film came out of it, and I thought it was such a wonderful evolution to turn that story into the larger scandal of the UN bringing cholera to Haiti. I don’t think many films can transform such a personal story into something that’s so politically relevant. I think if you told people that you were showing a film about cholera, Haiti, and the UN, people would think it was going to be either totally devastating or completely dry. But this film brings you into the story from a unique place because it is a human story — the effect that cholera has on this one particular family. Having met Joseph, his family, and his mother, you can understand why it’s important to face this disease head-on and to take it seriously. I don’t even think that the international community has been aware of cholera as the crisis that it is and has been. Even after people see the film they say to me, “I had no idea that cholera had even happened to Haiti, I thought that all of their troubles were simply from the earthquake.”

Your film says that the UN has a budget of $800 million, and so far they have been unwilling to take responsibility. As I speak to you now, how many have been touched by the cholera epidemic in Haiti?

David: 530,000 people have been sickened, and we have lost over 7,030. But it is the rainy season right now, which is the cholera season, and the cholera has just spiked. This story is more pressing now than ever. We’re really hoping with this film that we can apply pressure on the United Nations to take responsibility and to help the Haitian government to eradicate cholera. Which is certainly something that they have the capacity to do.

How do your families feel about your living in and visiting a country that is suffering such a terrible health epidemic? Cholera can kill a person in four hours. Most mothers would probably never get off the phone again until they had booked some kind of return ticket! (laughter)

Olivia: These two have sacrificed a lot, by moving out there. Not a lot of people have done that.

Bryn: My mom doesn’t like that I’m gone all the time, and that she knows that she can’t say anything about it, because I’d run away! (laughter) We try to talk as often as we can, and she’s always so excited when I come back home. She lives on the border in Arizona near Mexico in a little cabin and she’s always saying, “Come home and take long naps.”

David: My parents are journalists, so they understand and have encouraged it for a long time.Baseball in the Time of Cholera has a very important message, which is that cholera was never in Haiti before 2010, when the peacekeepers brought it. People hear about cholera in Haiti and they think, “Oh it’s just another of Haiti’s problems,” but it’s not the fault of the Haitian people. Haiti has been dealt so many blows by other countries; it is such an abused nation. The first step is to say to the UN, “It is not okay to bring the cholera bug to Haiti, dump your sewage into the river, kill 7,000 people, and then deny that you did it, and try to get away with it.”

There are two remarkable lawyers in the film, Mario Joseph and Brian Concannon, leading the Haitian people’s lawsuit against the UN. Do you think that the UN will ever take responsibility?

Bryn: Brian Concannon from the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti is a hero of all of ours as well. We genuinely hope that the United Nations will take responsibility for infecting the Haitian people and work with them to provide the clean water and sanitation that the Haitian people deserve. It’s going to be a long battle. It’s unprecedented for them [the UN] for them to take responsibility in this manner, but we’re really hoping that the pressure will just be too much. We’re starting to see that the pressure is really mounting.

Filmmakers Bryn Mooser and David Darg with Producer Olivia Wilde. Portrait by Leslie Hassler.

David: It’s a David and Goliath story. The UN have impunity and immunity in Haiti and here you have these poor peasants whose lives have been torn apart by this disease filing a lawsuit against one of the biggest organizations in the world, if not the biggest. Who technically have immunity. So it’s a long shot. But it is such an important shot. We hope that the message of this film will join the voices of the Haitian people in trying to bring this issue to the forefront. This is one of the biggest environmental and humanitarian scandals of the last ten years, and something needs to be done about it.

Bryn: And this is also not just for Haiti, we really look at this as a fight for the world. This is a global fight. It’s not just about how the UN behaves in Haiti. It’s not just about how peacekeepers behaved in Haiti. It’s about peacekeepers in the Congo, in Syria or wherever they’re based. David touched on the environmental issues. Those are vital to the message that we’re trying to get out, which is that in this day and age you cannot get away with dumping your waste into the largest water source for a country.

Olivia: It’s also about accountability. The UN should have to stand up and apologize not only to the Haitian victims but also to understand that they’re being held accountable all around the world for their actions. I think with this film and with the energy surrounding it, and with all of the voices together, hopefully this will cause a major shift within the UN. For them to understand that people are noticing, that they’re seeing; this is the most important thing we can do. I think this film is a very powerful beacon, it really is something that touches people’s hearts, but hopefully it’s also a call to action.

Bryn: And there is a petition that we have called Undeny.com. We’re hoping that people will sign it.

Olivia, how did Haiti come into your periphery?

Olivia: My mom is a journalist and she did a piece for CBS news in 1987. I went with her after that, and fell in love with Haiti. And then Bryn and I met the same people in LA who gave us an opportunity to go to Haiti and to be useful. Then I started going every few months. It’s definitely one of my favorite places on earth. There is so much beauty, in addition to its troubles. Hopefully the film will allow people to see the beautiful side of Haiti, and the people. And maybe go there themselves and see why it’s a country worth saving, acknowledging, and caring about instead of allowing it to be swallowed up into the pit of poverty. It’s been like that for too long.

And the amazing thing is that it’s all doable. The UN does have this incredible budget, if they could allocate a huge chunk of that to eradicating cholera, they could also eradicate several other waterborne diseases. Through sanitation water projects, they could save thousands of innocent lives. And then Haiti could start getting back on its feet. There are so many projects that David and Bryn are involved with that are all about sustainable health. This is not just a Band-Aid. This is about allowing this country to thrive in the way it really can and should. The people there are incredible. I love it there. I’m excited to go next week, and we’ll be going there for the rest of our lives.

Bryn: We do love being in Haiti, so every morning that I’m there when I wake up, despite the problems, I feel so honored to be able to live and work in Haiti and to call it my home. And my friends there are my family. It’s an extraordinary place to live, I wouldn’t trade it for all the office cubicles in the world!! (laughter)

I want you each to tell me quickly your favorite thing about Haiti. I think you’re right; most of us are so overwhelmed by its problems that we’ve lost sight of its beauty.
To watch all three of your faces is to see that you genuinely love it. What is it for you?

Olivia: The people.

David: The weather, the music, the culture, the beaches.

ONE thing! (laughter)

Bryn: The arts. And that it makes you feel very alive, when you’re there. It’s so easy in western modern life to get into a grind. Everything comes so easily. But when you have to struggle a bit to survive, it makes you feel very alive and every day is different.

The lawyer Mario Joseph (called by the New York Times Haiti’s most prominent Human Rights Lawyer) says he’ll never stop fighting for the poor people of Haiti, and tells us about an important phrase from Haitian history that means “Power to the People.” How do you say it in Creole?

Bryn: “Viktwa pou Pép la”

That’s the one.

Click HERE to See The Original Article
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project 

This guest post is cross-posted from the Center for Global Development.

By Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz

Last week, USAID finally published an evaluation report on its activities in Haiti: “Independent Review of the U.S. Government Response to the Haiti Earthquake”.  The report is dated March 28, 2011. Yes, 2011. It took over a year to post the document on the USAID website.  The review was conducted by MacFadden and Associates – which operates an $80M Indefinite Quantity Contract from USAID.  There are some frank and enlightening assessments of USG response and coordination, but very little discussion of aid accountability.

Here are some impressions of the report:

Let’s start with the good.

Strengthen USAID. The report very clearly calls for a strengthening USAID: improved institutional structures, more staff and capacity, investments in new technology, and a reduction in reliance on outside contractors.  It is a call that has been made many times before, as USAID has evolved from a development implementer into an organization that manages contractors and grantees.  For example, USAID’s direct-hire workforce has decreased from around 8600 in 1962 to 2900 in 2009, despite an increase in foreign assistance. The report says that USAID’s weaknesses were especially apparent because the President appointed USAID as the lead agency in the USG Haiti response.

Nix the “whole of government” approach in disaster response. The report recommends that a “whole of government” approach should not be used in future international disaster response.  It is a concern that our colleague Todd Moss has previously discussed.  Although the idea of having all federal agencies at the table seems logical, it also creates parallel chains of command and further constrains the USG’s ability to get things done.  This is especially true in a disaster situation where rapid response is needed.  After the quake, more than 12 federal agencies sent staff to Haiti.  This created problems in terms of clear lines of authority, with specific reporting structures and delineated functions between agencies.

Read more...

By Michael Norby and Brian Fitzpatrick, The Gurdian

Members of the dissolved Haitian army parade at Camp Lamantin, a former military base in Port-au-Prince. Photograph: Ramon Espinosa/AP

UN and Haitian government officials are scrambling to find a peaceful way to disarm a rogue group of former soldiers demanding the immediate return of the Haitian armed forces, 17 years after the country’s notoriously brutal army was disbanded.

A brazen group of ex-soldiers, some of whom are remnants of dictatorships which used the army to terrorise the people, is attempting to force the president, Michel Martelly, to enact campaign promises to reinstate the army.

The group is thought to number between 2,500 and 3,000 and has set 18 May as a deadline.

“We’re not joking around,” said Larose Aubin, a former army sergeant, at a recent press conference. “We’re going to come with force and with the population, and we will get what we’re looking for. Even if we lose our lives, we will fight. They can’t kill us all.”

Another former sergeant, Yves Jeudy, said: “After 18 May, if the government hasn’t done anything, they will see what happens. We’re not going back and they need to give us an answer quick. We’re running out of patience.”

Although they began training immediately after Martelly’s inauguration last year, the former soldiers upped the ante this February by seizing abandoned army bases throughout the country. Since then, armed men and women in military fatigues have paraded in various towns, performing traffic stops in full view of Haitian national police and UN troops.

Martelly intends to proceed with the creation of a new army and has appointed a presidential commission to do so, but the plan is expected to exclude all but a few from this rogue element and is still a few years away from completion.

An effort to disperse the former soldiers by offering the leaders their long-owed military pensions and back pay has not been successful. Most of the young recruits are ineligible for this scheme.

Matters escalated on 19 April when up to 50 men in uniform – some armed with hand grenades – arrived at the parliament building and disrupted a legislative session discussing the ratification of the prime-minister-designate, Laurent Lamothe.

The leading Haitian human rights lawyer Mario Joseph said Martelly’s promises on the army’s return had created a vacuum being filled by opportunists.

“It’s the president who created the whole storm,” he said. “He’s set it up perfectly for violence. A lot of people want the army to come back because they think they can get jobs from it. They have no idea what they are getting themselves into.”

Labelling the turn of events Haiti’s “little monster”, the UN stabilisation force for Haiti (Minustah) spokeswoman Sylvie Van Den Wildenberg acknowledged that although exhaustive measures were being taken, the situation was deteriorating.

“Things are now moving fast and we are discussing it with the government,” she said. “We are in a very sensitive situation and we have to make sure that we keep it as stable as possible.

“As with every peacekeeping mission under chapter seven [of the UN charter], force is the last resort. But we are monitoring the situation very closely and we will not let anyone destabilise the country.”

If force is ultimately needed, chapter seven approves military action when peace is threatened. But just how the Haitian people would react to armed intervention from the 7,500-strong UN force is of grave concern.

Since arriving in Haiti in 2004, Minustah’s reputation has been tarnished by violent incursions into Port-au-Prince neighbourhoods such as Cité Soleil and Bel-Air, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties. Matters have been compounded by the conviction of two Pakistani peacekeepers for rape and last year’s cholera outbreak, which many suspect was brought to Haiti by Nepalese blue helmets.

The upshot, according to Georges Michel of the presidential commission, is that the rebel soldiers are more popular than the UN peacekeepers.

“The people are with them,” he said. “This would be a major catastrophe for President Martelly if he calls upon Minustah to crack down on them. They will be seen as heroes and Martelly as the villain. So a peaceful and political solution must be found.”

Martelly returned to Port-au-Prince on Monday after spending two weeks in Miami for treatment for a blood clot on his lung and it is thought that a decision on how to deal with matters is imminent. The group has now ignored repeated orders from the president to lay down arms.

Minustah analysis suggests the group is not very well armed, yet when asked if his group had access to sufficient weaponry, Jeudy seemed amused. As his men repeated a chant of “freedom or death!” the veteran gave a bold response.

“We’re military,” he said. “And you know what a military can do.”

Click HERE To See the Original Article

BY Jane Chong and Muneer I. Ahmad, The Miami Herald

AHMAD

Two years after Haiti’s deadly 2010 earthquake, a second humanitarian crisis continues to claim Haitian lives.

Whereas the first crisis was a natural disaster, the second — a massive outbreak of cholera — was man-made. Worse still, although the United Nations unwittingly caused the epidemic, the world’s largest humanitarian organization has disclaimed responsibility and has failed to address the legitimate demands of the thousands of Haitians affected.

In October 2010, U.N. peacekeeping troops stationed about 100 kilometers north of Port-au-Prince at a camp lacking basic sanitation facilities dumped human waste into a tributary of the Artibonite, the country’s largest river system. This set off what has become the world’s worst and fastest-spreading cholera epidemic, infecting over 500,000 people and killing more than 7,000.

Before late 2010, when U.N. troops arrived carrying pathogens from cholera-stricken Nepal, not a single case of cholera had been reported in Haiti for a century. Seven months after the outbreak, a U.N.-appointed independent panel of international experts released a report largely confirming what a number of epidemiological studies had already concluded: U.N. troops were the sole source of the disease. The report also found that the U.N. had failed not only to ensure proper sanitary waste disposal in accordance with its agreement with Haiti, but also to conduct adequate water safety tests or to take timely corrective measures when cholera exploded throughout the country.

As a result, by July 2011, cholera was spreading at the rate of one person per minute. In the absence of comprehensive efforts to combat the disease, cholera will plague Haiti for years to come. According to the U.N. Pan-American Health Organization, 200 new cholera cases continue to be reported daily, with an expected increase this month with the start of the rainy season.

Despite the U.N.’s clear culpability, the cholera victims have limited means of redress. According to the Status of Forces Agreement between Haiti and the United Nations, the victims have the right to file claims for unintentional harms caused by its personnel. Accordingly, the non-governmental organizations Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux have filed complaints on behalf of 5,000 victims. But the U.N. has failed to even set up a mechanism for receiving these claims, much less resolving them.

In the complaints delivered to the U.N., the victims request a public apology, compensation and new investments in water, sanitation and medical infrastructures as the highly contagious disease continues to debilitate the country. In the event that the U.N. continues to shirk its responsibility, the IJDH and BAI intend to seek legal redress. But the U.N. may attempt to claim qualified or absolute immunity — doctrines designed to shield certain international and sovereign entities from legal liability — to place itself beyond the power of the courts.

The U.N.’s continuing failure to account for its role in starting the epidemic is particularly disturbing given the organization’s humanitarian objectives. In 2004, the world body created the U.N. Stabilization Mission in Haiti, (known by its French acronym, MINUSTAH), “to ensure individual accountability for human rights abuses and redress for victims” and to “put an end to impunity” in Haiti.

MINUSTAH should hold itself to its own standards and provide redress to the thousands of victims who seek not a scapegoat, but a means to reverse U.N.-created harms. Accepting responsibility in this instance would give MINUSTAH the opportunity to reverse a tradition of U.N. impunity for its human rights violations in Haiti. In other instances of egregious misconduct — including the recent rape of a Haitian youth by U.N. soldiers, caught on video — the United Nations has failed to even issue an apology and has initiated only half-hearted and delayed investigations.

For the U.N. to claim immunity despite causing the cholera epidemic would amount to a refusal to live up to its agreement with Haiti, and a disavowal of the principles on which U.N. peacekeeping mission are based. And in the absence of a legal mechanism to address the victims’ complaints, hundreds of thousands of Haitians could be without remedy. For now, the crisis in Haiti continues to claim lives, and victims and their families have few places to turn.

Muneer I. Ahmad is a clinical professor at Yale Law School and directs the Transnational Development Clinic, of which Jane Chong, a second-year law student, is a member. MUNEER.AHMAD@YALE.EDU

Click HERE to See The Original Article
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project

By John A. Carroll, MD

Lucy in Front of St. Catherine’s Hospital, Cite Soleil (Photo by John Carroll)

As I left St. Catherine’s Hospital several days ago, there was a distraught sweaty man standing a few in front of me. He was next to an unconscious lady in a wheelbarrow.

I was not startled because this is a common way of transporting sick people in Cite Soleil.
Wheelbarrows.

I reached for her neck to see if she had a carotid pulse. It was weak…but it was there.

I asked the man what was wrong. He told me that the lady had a sudden and constant onset of diarrhea and vomiting the day before. She had been “bien prop” (very well) the day before that.

She had cholera.

Her name is Lucy (made up name) and she is 26 years old. She is from Soleil 13.

The man pushing the wheelbarrow wanted to enter the hospital but the guards said no and were keeping the green doors closed. The guards said there was no doctor inside, but I knew differently since I had been working with the MSPP (Haitian Public Health) doctor in the Emergency Room (ER).

I insisted that there was a doctor inside so the guards slid the gate open and the man pushed the lady in. I guided him to the area outside the ER.

The Cholera Treatment Center (CTC) at St. Catherine’s is closed.  Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staffed the CTC and it saved the lives of thousands of people in 2011. But now there is no place close for the people in Soleil to go when they get cholera.… like Lucy.

We parked her outside the ER and I rallied the ER doctor and nurse who responded immediately.  Lucy looked like death and barely responded to painful stimuli.

We were able to start an 18 gauge angiocath in the back of her left hand and and 20 gauge angiocath in the right ankle saphenous vein as it hung it below the handle of the wheelbarrow.

I handed the bags of Ringer’s Lactate to people close by the wheelbarrow who held them high and squeezed the IV fluid into Lucy.

The ER doc calmly told the man who had pushed Lucy through the filthy crowded streets of Soleil that St. Catherines’s does not have a place for cholera patients and she would need to go to MSF-Holland in a Delmas neighborhood in PAP. The doctor gently told the man that Lucy needed to leave. There was nothing more to do here.

The man looked incredulously at the ER doctor. He could not push her the four miles to the CTC.

I asked the hospital chauffeur who drives the van for hospital employees if he would take Lucy.  He said no.

So we hung another bag of fluid and pushed Lucy out through the hospital gate to the street in front of  the hospital. Jean-Claude, my driver, was waiting in his truck. We carefully lifted Lucy into the truck bed and slid her towards the cab.  Two family members had arrived at that point and they supported Lucy and held the bags of Ringer’s high over their heads.

Makeshift Ambulance for Lucy (Photo by John Carroll)

In front of us was a crowd of about a fifty young men. They were watching a soccer game on a tiny television. They totally ignored Lucy and her struggle for life because they have seen too much death in Soleil.

Jean-Claude drove through the rainy streets of Port-au-Prince and about twenty minutes later we arrived at the MSF-Holland CTC in the Delmas neighborhood.

Ringer’s Lactate for Lucy (Photo by John Carroll)

The IV in Lucy’s right ankle had run dry but the other continued to function. The CTC opened their gates immediately when we honked and unloaded Lucy onto a dirty green stretcher.

I gave a quick history to the MSF doctor on call. Lucy was moving her arms now and her carotid pulse had slowed and was stronger.

She was placed in a tent. Lucy needed an ICU for shock, but she got a tent instead. However, we didn’t complain.

Lucy at Cholera Treatment Center, MSF-Holland (Photo by John Carroll)

MSF-Holland told me that during the last two weeks they were evaluating 20 new cholera patients per day in their CTC in Delmas. (MSF CTC’s all over Port-au-Prince are seeing more cholera patients now during the rainy season.)

There is a good chance that Lucien will survive now. She has a 26 year old heart that can accept the volume that she needs.

—–

Conclusion and Questions:

Haiti is in the midst of the worst cholera epidemic in the world. This is not the way to save Lucy and many others like her from cholera.

If the man who had pushed Lucy in the wheelbarrow didn’t have the strength or fortitude to get her to St. Catherine’s Hospital,  or if they would have shown up just a little bit later, they would have found no physician or nursing staff to help her. And Lucy would have died in the wheelbarrow.

How many people in Soleil never get the chance Lucy got? We will never know. They die hidden in the maze of the slum.

And when I have asked people in Soleil where is the closest CTC, no one has any idea.

Can’t a CTC or a CTU be set up now in Soleil with basic equipment like IV catheters and Ringer’s Lactate and a nurse or two to stabilize the Lucy’s of Soleil?

Is this asking too much?

John A. Carroll, MD
www.haitianhearts.org

Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project

By Allie Torgan, CNN

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (CNN) – Three days after a massive earthquake threw Haiti into chaos, Alvana was homeless, along with her two children.

But her nightmare was just beginning.

“I was gang-raped while I was sleeping in the middle of the street,” she said. “And I got pregnant.”

Alvana did not know her attackers. Depressed and unsure of what to do next, she was directed by a friend to a clinic run by KOFAVIV, a Creole acronym that translates into the Commission of Women Victims for Victims.

“By the time I got to them, my belly was already big,” she said. “But they took care of me.”

Alvana was given food, water, housing and prenatal care. She decided to keep her daughter, even though the psychological pain could be difficult — and still is, two years later.

“It’s terrible,” said Alvana, 33. “I love my daughter … (but) I look at myself and see that I have a child that is a product of a gang rape.”

Malya Villard-Appolon, right, knows what it’s like to be a victim of sexual violence. She has been raped twice.

Her story is, unfortunately, all too common in Haiti, said Malya Villard-Appolon, one of KOFAVIV’s co-founders.

“After (the earthquake), the situation was inhumane and degrading,” Villard-Appolon said. “There was no security in the (displacement) camps. There was no food; there was no work. And now there is a rampant problem.”

Accurate numbers are difficult, if not impossible, to find in the aftermath of such devastation, butKOFAVIV and other groups say they have seen a definite increase in rape cases after the January 2010 earthquake.

“Victims became more vulnerable due to a range of things,” said Brian Concannon Jr., director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. “They lost their houses; there were no locked doors anymore. People lost family members who were a source of protection.”

Terrible living conditions, including a shortage of food and water, contribute to the problem as well, said Charity Tooze, a senior communications officer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Washington office.

“The conditions are so dehumanizing,” Tooze said. “Over months and months, it increases all forms of violence, including sexual violence.”

There has also been a lack of prosecution in the country. In the first two years after the quake, not one person in Haiti has been convicted of rape, according to the UNHCR.

“The big problem is, you can’t find justice,” said Villard-Appolon, 52.

Even before the quake, she says, rape was an issue in Haiti, historically underreported because of social stigma, retaliation from perpetrators and a lack of legal support. That is what led her and Marie Eramithe Delva to start KOFAVIV in 2004. Since the group’s inception, it has helped more than 4,000 rape survivors find safety, psychological support and/or legal aid.

“We tell people to come out of silence,” she said. “Do not be afraid to say that you have been victimized.”

Villard-Appolon knows what it’s like to be a victim of sexual violence. She has been raped twice, and her husband died as a result of beatings he endured trying to save her from being raped. In 2010, her 14-year-old daughter was raped in a displacement camp.

“I can’t describe to you how I felt when I heard about that, because I was a victim,” she said. “I started asking myself what kind of generation I came from. Am I cursed?”

Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2012 CNN Heroes

She escorted her daughter to two police stations and received no assistance, she said, just a lot of talk. One police officer told her that “girls are so promiscuous” and indicated that many young girls are asking for sex.

But she carries on, “fighting with hope that I know there will be a change,” she said. Internationally, she has testified before the United Nations Human Rights Council, calling for increased security within the displacement camps and asking that women’s groups be included in decision-making processes.

“I was a victim, and I did not find justice. But know I will get it for other women,” she told CNN.

When the earthquake hit Haiti, KOFAVIV’s founders watched their clinic and their offices collapse along with their homes.

Villard-Appolon lived in the dangerous Champ de Mars displacement camp for half a year. There, she said, she watched as conditions deteriorated.

“It was all kinds of people who ended up in one area,” she said. “The jails were not destroyed, but their doors were opened, and all prisoners went free. Many of them … were armed, and they were notorious murderers.”

One criminal held Villard-Appolon at gunpoint, demanding money. The police never showed up, she said, but she managed to escape after a group of supporters arrived to fight.

Villard-Appolon said many single women had to leave their children with strangers in order to search for food, water or work. In some cases, the children were raped. The youngest victim, she says, was a 17-month-old.

“I spent six months witnessing it,” she said. “Babies are not spared; adults are not spared; mothers are not spared; sisters are not spared.”

Despite the escalating violence and the loss of its clinic, KOFAVIV regrouped to help victims in Haiti’s “tent city” camps, where about 500,000 people still live today. The group has 66 female outreach agents and 25 male security guards who work within the camps, organizing nighttime community watch groups and providing whistles and flashlights to women. All of them have been affected by gender-based violence, whether personally or through a family member or loved one, Villard-Appolon said.

KOFAVIV also relies on more than 1,000 members to help share their stories, support the victims and urge them to come forward and fight for justice.

It usually starts by accompanying the victims to the hospital within 72 hours of being raped. Once they undergo a test, they receive the medical certificate they must have to begin legal proceedings.

“After that, we assign a lawyer to her,” Villard-Appolon said. There is no cost to the victims, and they receive support from KOFAVIV through the trial.

Villard-Appolon says she is determined to keep fighting for a brighter future, even though justice has been elusive.

“My dream is that we will get to a place where we stop talking about the number of rape cases,” she said. “We will stop talking about Haiti as a country where people are committing violence against others. One day, we have to be able to say that we have a country with people who respect each other.”

Want to get involved? Check out www.madre.org/kofaviv and see how to help.

Click HERE to See The Original Article
Click HERE to See More Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Rape Account­abil­ity and Pre­ven­tion Project (RAPP)

Published By The Economist

Foreign peacekeepers have worn out their welcome. How can they be held accountable for their actions?

HAITIANS have good reason to be suspicious of foreigners claiming to act in their interests. In the 19th century France, the former imperial power, kindly offered to have Parisian banks finance the reparations it demanded in exchange for recognising the country’s independence. The resulting debt drained Haiti’s treasury for decades. A century later the United States generously built up the country’s infrastructure—using virtual slave labour during a brutal military occupation.

Today’s foreign do-gooders in Haiti are the 9,000 members of Minustah, the UN’s peacekeeping force. They are surely better-meaning than the interlopers of the past. But the Haitian government has little more influence over them than it did over America’s marines. And in recent years the force has inflicted great damage. Its troops have been blamed for starting a cholera epidemic that has claimed 7,000 lives, and have been accused in numerous cases of rape and sexual assault. Its missteps are leading to ever more strident calls for greater accountability for peacekeepers.

The latest public-relations volley was launched on April 21st at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. “Baseball in the Time of Cholera”, directed by two foreign-aid workers living in Haiti, weaves together the stories of a teenage athlete who loses his mother to cholera and lawyers suing the UN for negligent sanitation at a Nepali peacekeeping base . The film features plenty of news footage of the base, including sewage pipes flowing into a tributary of Haiti’s largest river. The first cholera cases appeared near the base, and the bacteria—a South Asian strain—quickly spread along the river and its network of canals, which Haitians use for bathing, drinking, irrigating crops and washing clothes.

Since the outbreak began the UN has tried to dodge accusations of responsibility, saying that the source of the disease is unknowable or unimportant. But a series of epidemiological and genome studies have all but established Minustah’s role as fact. Even Bill Clinton, the UN’s own special envoy for Haiti, has acknowledged it. “It was the proximate cause of cholera,” he said last month. “That is, [a Minustah soldier] was carrying the cholera strain. It came from his waste stream into the waterways of Haiti, into the bodies of Haitians.”

Citing scientific evidence, in November the lawyers featured in the film filed 5,000 complaints to Minustah’s claims office on behalf of cholera victims, seeking at least $250m in damages. The UN’s peacekeeping department says it is studying them. Until now, the claims office has dealt with smaller matters, such as property damage.

Minustah’s agreement with the government states that bigger disputes should be handled by a special tribunal. So far, however, none has been set up. Since the force and its troops enjoy immunity from local courts—which most countries demand before offering soldiers to the UN—cholera victims have no other formal legal recourse. As a result, their lawyers are threatening to challenge Minustah’s immunity in the Haitian courts if the UN does not address their claims. That could affect peacekeeping operations worldwide.

Minustah’s reputation has been further tarnished by charges of sexual abuse. Two Pakistani soldiers were accused of raping a 14-year-old boy, and a group of Uruguayan peacekeepers allegedly sexually assaulted an 18-year-old boy and videoed the incident. The justice system has worked somewhat better in these cases—a Pakistani military tribunal convened in Haiti convicted its soldiers last month, and the Uruguayans seem likely to face trial in their home country. But the Pakistanis were sentenced to just one year in prison. A popular song at this year’s Haitian Carnival included a line cautioning young men nearby the peacekeepers to watch their rears.

Even as Haitians have been outraged by Minustah’s wrongdoing, they have become increasingly doubtful of the benefits it provides. The UN originally deployed the force in 2004 to stabilise the country during the civil unrest that followed the ejection of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist former priest, from the presidency. There has been no serious armed conflict in Haiti since 2006—which can be taken as evidence either of Minustah’s effectiveness or of its irrelevance. Even if the troops do contribute to security, critics of the force note that a single year of its $800m budget might be enough to revamp the country’s decrepit water infrastructure. That might well have prevented cholera from spreading in the first place.

Minustah’s footprint in Haiti is getting somewhat lighter. Assuming that 1,600 troops leave by June as scheduled, the force will be cut to 7,400, roughly the same number as before Haiti’s earthquake in January 2010. But further reductions are unlikely in view of the political tumult during the first year of the presidency of Michel Martelly, a former musician. In February his prime minister, Gary Conille, offered to resign after just four months in office, which he spent mainly investigating corruption. Mr Martelly can do little until a successor is confirmed. On April 17th, 50 members of a rogue paramilitary force, claiming to represent a volunteer militia that has occupied an abandoned army barracks, disrupted parliament and forced it out of session. The president himself was abroad, recovering from an embolism. The government is in no position to dictate terms. Only the UN can restore Minustah’s legitimacy.

Click HERE to See The Original Article 
Click HERE  to See more Infor­ma­tion about IJDH’s Cholera Account­abil­ity Project 

April 26, 2012                                                                                                           Contact: Mikael Moore
For Immediate Release                                                                                         Phone: (202) 225‑2201

Congresswoman Waters Urges State Department to
Use U.S. Influence to Avoid Chaos in Haiti

Washington – Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), a strong advocate for the Haitian people in the U.S. Congress, sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dated April 24, 2012, expressing grave concern about the current political crisis in Haiti.  Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA), Congresswoman Yvette Clarke (D-NY), and Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) also signed the Congresswoman’s letter.  The text of the letter follows:

“As congressional friends of the people of Haiti, we have been observing the recent political crisis in that country with grave concern.

“The sudden and unexpected resignation of Prime Minister Garry Conille is a cause for serious concern.  We had the opportunity to meet with him on several occasions, including while he was in Washington, DC, on February 9th.  We believed he was ideal for the job.  He appeared to be very hard-working and dedicated to the people of Haiti.  He was working hard to develop productive relationships with President Michel Martelly and members of the Haitian Parliament.  We supported his efforts to improve transparency as it relates to government contracts and other important government business.

“Prior to his resignation, there were rumors that his life had been threatened.  We urged him to share this information with the U.S. State Department.  Unfortunately, less than one month after we met with him, he resigned.  Prime Minister Conille’s resignation does not speak well for Haiti.

“We are also concerned about the decision to drop all charges against Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier for human rights violations committed during his fifteen-year reign.  We suspect that this decision is an attempt to exonerate him and reintegrate him into Haitian society.  We are especially concerned that his rehabilitation apparently has the support of President Martelly.  What does this mean?  Is there a credible, independent justice system in Haiti at this time?

“We are further concerned by the rumors that former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide may be arrested based on trumped-up corruption charges.  These rumors could be an indication that President Aristide’s life is in danger.  Is this true?  Is President Aristide’s life in danger?  President Aristide continues to have substantial and widespread support in Haiti.  If any harm should come to him, it would cause turmoil and disruption in Haiti.  Furthermore, the outcry and disruption would only serve to set Haiti back, discourage investment, and create yet another crisis in this troubled country.

“The United States played an important role in resolving the issues surrounding Haiti’s last presidential election.  Our action’s helped position President Michel Martelly to emerge from the November 2010 election as the strongest candidate, thus enabling him to win the runoff election the following spring.  While some of us may have questioned the role the United States played in the elections, once the election took place, many of us vowed to give support to the new president and do everything we can to assist him in addressing Haiti’s urgent needs for housing, cholera treatment, infrastructure, and job creation.  Just as the United States accepted responsibility for the crisis over the election, we have great hope that the United States will accept responsibility for the political crisis Haiti is facing now.

“An especially worrisome development is the unofficial reestablishment of the army.  Prior to his election, President Martelly supported the reestablishment of the army, despite the fact that it is known primarily among the Haitian people for its gross violations of human rights.  The international community appears to agree that there should be no funding or support for the reestablishment of the army at this time.  However, it appears that the army is being organized on an unofficial basis.  Old police stations have been taken over by former members and supporters of the army and the brutal tonton macoutes paramilitary force, and these individuals are conducting training exercises throughout Haiti.

“We recognize that Haiti is a sovereign nation and has the right to develop its own laws and policies.  However, the American people have been very supportive of Haiti since the earthquake, and the United States has taken a leading role in supporting democracy and reconstruction.  The United States Congress provided emergency supplemental appropriations for relief efforts and passed legislation to cancel Haiti’s multilateral debts.  We cannot sit by idly and watch while current events undermine our efforts.

“We respectfully urge you to establish a commission to oversee Haiti’s political development.  Furthermore, we urge you to work with the Martelly administration, the Haitian Parliament, and representatives of civil society in Haiti to ensure that human rights are respected, democratic progress is not reversed, and political instability and chaos are not allowed to interfere with Haiti’s development.  Finally, we urge you to keep us informed about the work of this commission and political developments in Haiti.  Stable, effective governance is critical for Haiti’s future.”

### 

To read more about Congresswoman Waters’ longtime work on Haiti, click here.
Click HERE to See The Original Press Release