A/71/367
Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty
and human rights
Summary
Cholera arrived in Haiti in October 2010, soon after the arrival of a new
contingent of United Nations peacekeepers from a cholera -infected region. The
scientific evidence now points overwhelmingly to the responsibility of the
peacekeeping mission as the source of the outbreak. So far, 9,145 persons have died
and almost 780,000 have been infected.
In August 2016, after a draft of the present report was leaked to the media, it
was announced that the Secretary-General was developing a new approach which
would address many of the concerns raised in the report. The Deputy Secretary General indicated that the Secretary-General has also reiterated that the United
Nations has a “moral responsibility” to the victims and would provid e them with
additional “material assistance and support”. The Special Rapporteur warmly
welcomes this initiative.
It remains indispensable, however, that the new process should also involve an
apology entailing acceptance of responsibility and an acceptance that the victims’
claims raise private law matters, thus requiring the United Nations to provide an
appropriate remedy. Acceptance of these two elements would in no way prejudice the
Organization’s right to immunity from suit, nor would it open the floo dgates to other
claims.
The legal position of the United Nations to date has involved denial of legal
responsibility for the outbreak, rejection of all claims for compensation, a refusal to
establish the procedure required to resolve such private law mat ters, and entirely
unjustified suggestions that the Organization’s absolute immunity from suit would be
jeopardized by adopting a different approach. The existing approach is morally
unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating. It is also entirely
unnecessary. In practice, it jeopardizes the immunity of the United Nations by
encouraging arguments calling for it to be reconsidered by national courts; it upholds
a double standard according to which the United Nations insists that Membe r States
respect human rights, while rejecting any such responsibility for itself; it leaves the
United Nations vulnerable to eventual claims for damages and compensation in this
and subsequent cases, which are most unlikely to be settled on terms that are
manageable from the perspective of the Organization; it provides highly combustible
fuel for those who claim that United Nations peacekeeping operations trample on the
rights of those being protected; and it undermines both the overall credibility of the
Organization and the integrity of the Office of the Secretary -General.
The past policy of the United Nations relied on a claim of scientific uncertainty.
That is no longer sustainable given what is now known. The United Nations was
clearly responsible and it must now act accordingly.
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