BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - LAST WEEK’S announced findings by a group of international scientists that the 2010 outbreak of a cholera epidemic in Haiti was caused by then United Nations peacekeeping troops would further fuel strident compensation demands by families of the more than 8000 dead.
On March 19 last year, we had lamented the silence of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), of which Haiti is a member state, to the communication by United Nations Secretary General
Ban Ki-Moon to President Michel Martelly that the world body had opted to invoke “legal immunity” against compensation claims.
Human rights and other civil society organizations in Haiti and the United States have been quite critical of the UN’s response as well as the apparent failure by the Haitian administration to signal a positive response to the compensation demands on behalf of the victims plus hundreds struggling for survival.