UN human rights expert: “UN lawyers undermine a just
solution for the victims of cholera in Haiti”
NEW YORK (25 October 2016) – United Nations human rights
expert Philip Alston claimed today that flawed and unfounded legal advice
provided by the UN lawyers is preventing the Organization from accepting
responsibility for the cholera outbreak that UN peacekeepers caused in Haiti in
2010.
“The UN’s explicit and unqualified denial of anything
other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace,” Alston said today. “If the
United Nations bluntly refuses to hold itself accountable for human rights
violations, it makes a mockery of its efforts to hold Governments and others to
account,” he noted.
Cholera was brought to Haiti for the first time in the
country’s history by UN peacekeepers exactly six years ago. Almost 10,000
people have died as a result and around 800,000 have been infected, affecting
close to ten per cent of the population.
In a report* to the UN General Assembly, the Special
Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights criticised the UN’s Office of
Legal Affairs (OLA) for coming up with a “patently artificial and wholly
unfounded legal pretence for insisting that the Organization must not take
legal responsibility for what it has done.”
Mr. Alston also noted that OLA’s approach “has been
cloaked in secrecy: there has been no satisfactory official explanation of the
policy, no public attempt to justify it, and no known assessment of its
consequences for future cases. This goes directly against the principles of
accountability, transparency and the rule of law that the UN itself promotes
globally.”
The Special Rapporteur noted that the Organization’s
legal position appears to largely explained by the approach of the United
States of America, Haiti’s close neighbour and the main contributor to the UN’s
peacekeeping budget.
“There are many reasons to believe that the reluctance by
OLA to accept legal responsibility is consistent with views strongly pressed by
the United States. Despite numerous requests to do so, the United States itself
has never publicly stated its legal position on the responsibility of the UN
for causing cholera in Haiti,” the expert said.
“Instead, it seems to have pressed the UN to adopt the
position frequently taken by lawyers in the US that responsibility should never
be accepted voluntarily, since it could complicate future litigation. But this rationale is completely inapplicable
to the UN which enjoys absolute immunity from suit in national courts, and
whose reputation depends almost entirely on being seen to act with integrity,”
he noted.
Mr. Alston explained that, for six years, the UN ignored
claims by victims for a remedy, focusing exclusively on measures to contain the
outbreak, and only after his draft report leaked to the New York Times in
August did the UN announce a ‘new approach’.
“The good news is that, under the courageous leadership
of the UN Secretary-General and Deputy Secretary-General, the UN has recently
set up the Haiti Cholera
Response Multi-Partner Trust Fund (MPTF) with the goal of
raising at least $400 million to greatly enhance its cholera eradication
efforts and to assist victims of the disease. The bad news is that the UN has
still not admitted factual or legal responsibility, and has not offered a legal
settlement as required by international law,” said the independent human rights
expert.
Mr. Alston said that even sympathetic and well-informed
observers had asked him why it was so important that the UN admits legal
responsibility. “Far from being a legal technicality, the OLA position has deep
and lasting consequences, for Haiti and all future cases,” he noted.
“The current stance of its lawyers ensures that the UN
will never admit its responsibility for introducing cholera,” Mr. Alston said.
“And avoiding legal responsibility hinders the UN from learning lessons and
making sure that the fatal mistakes made in Haiti are not repeated elsewhere.”
“If the UN wants to salvage its reputation and
credibility, which have been severely damaged by the cholera crisis, and ensure
that this case will not haunt it forever, it needs to do the right thing and admit
legal responsibility. There is no justification, legal or otherwise, for any
other course of action,” the Special Rapporteur concluded.
(*) Read the full report at:
http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/dpage_e.aspx?si=A/71/367
ENDS
Mr. Philip Alston (Australia) took up his functions as
the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in June 2014. The
Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the
Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent
experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the independent
fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms of the Human Rights Council that address
either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the
world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN
staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any
government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. Learn more,
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