BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Unless I missed it, I cannot recall any head of government of our Caribbean Community (CARICOM) making any reference in his/her address at the current session of the United Nations General Assembly in support of Haiti’s position that the United Nations has a “moral obligation” to offer compensation to an estimated 8 000 cholera victims linked to negligence by a contingent of the world body’s peacekeeping force in that poverty-stricken nation.
Up to the end of his six-month tenure as CARICOM’s chairman that concluded with last July’s annual Summit of Heads of Government in Port-of-Spain, Haiti’s President Michel Martelly was mysteriously missing in action when it came to taking a public stand on the UN’s obligation. Despite, that is, rising calls from human rights and other civil society organizations at home and abroad, for the UN to offer compensation based on documented evidence of negligence by a Nepalese contingent of its peacekeeping military force.
Surprisingly the public call, on behalf of the government in Port-au-Prince, for the UN to honour its “moral responsibility” to the victims of the cholera outbreak – which had followed the unprecedented earthquake devastation of that country back in January 2010 – came last week from Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe when he addressed the general assembly on September 27.