(Reuters) — 
The United Nations likely refused to accept legal responsibility for a cholera outbreak in Haiti that has killed thousands in the past six years because it was a position pressed by the United States, an independent U.N. investigator said on Tuesday (October 25).
Haiti was free of cholera until 2010, when U.N. peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river. Since then, more than 9,000 people have died of the disease, which causes uncontrollable diarrhea, and more than 800,000 people have fallen ill.
Philip Alston, the independent U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, told a U.N. committee on Tuesday that the world body has refused to publicly state the reason for its legal stance.
“The U.N. has opted to abdicate its responsibility. It refused to accept factual responsibility for the introduction of the epidemic; contested the scientific evidence on the basis of a self-evidently flawed and unjustified assessment; insisted that no legal claim for negligence could be brought against it, despite the clear provisions of the relevant treaty and its agreement with Haiti; refused to countenance the payment of any form of compensation even to the relatives of those who have died; issued no apology; and did not do enough to promote and strengthen efforts to achieve eradication,” Alston said.
“There is reason to believe that the position adopted by (the U.N. Office for Legal Affairs) in 2013 was consistent with views strongly pressed at the time by the United States,” said Alston, noting that the United States has a strong interest in the issue as a close neighbor of Haiti and the largest contributor to the U.N. peacekeeping budget.
He said the United States seemed to believe that the United Nations “must follow American legal practice, which generally takes the view that legal responsibility should never be accepted when it can possibly be avoided because one never knows the consequences for subsequent litigation.”
At a news conference following the meeting, Alston said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had been pressured.
“The SG (Secretary General) himself has complained bitterly about being subjected to inappropriate pressure from certain member states and has named those states on occasion. This seems to be another area where there is pressure from one particular member state and it seems to be so great that the Secretary-General has concluded that he doesn’t have room to do what I think he believes is the right thing, and I deeply regret that,” he said.
The U.S. mission to the United Nations was not immediately available to comment on Alston’s remarks.
After a lawsuit was filed in the United States on behalf of cholera victims, the United Nations said in 2013 that claims for compensation were “not receivable pursuant to Section 29 of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities.” A U.S. federal appeals court upheld the United Nations’ immunity in August.
Under Section 29, the United Nations is required to make provisions for “appropriate modes of settlement” of private law disputes to which the world body is a party or disputes involving a U.N. official who enjoys diplomatic immunity.
Alston said “if there is a private law issue, in other words negligence, then the U.N. is obligated to accept the claims that they make and to process them in some appropriate way – that’s what the U.N. is refusing to do.”
He said the United Nations could abide by its obligations under the treaty without jeopardizing its immunity.
Ban has said the world body has a “moral responsibility” to help the cholera victims with material support. He is working on a new approach to dealing with cholera in the Caribbean country, and the United Nations hopes to raise enough money to pay some $10,000 to each of the victims’ families.
But the world body acknowledged on Monday (October 24) that raising enough funding would be difficult.
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