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How the UN Might Have Inadvertently Started a Cholera Epidemic In Haiti
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Celso Perez and Muneer Ahmad write in The Atlantic that despite evidence to the contrary, for nearly three years, the United Nations has categorically denied that it introduced cholera into Haiti after the country suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010. Since then, cholera has killed more than 8,000 people and infected more than 600,000, creating an ongoing epidemic. According to extensive documentation by scientists and journalists, peacekeeping troops belonging to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) inadvertently but negligently brought cholera into the country several months after the January 2010 earthquake. That October, troops from Nepal carrying the disease were stationed at a military base near the town of Méyè. Because of inadequate water and sanitation facilities at the base, cholera-infected sewage contaminated the Artibonite River, the largest river in Haiti and one the country's main water sources. As locals consumed the contaminated water, cholera spread across the country. Absent from Haiti for over a century, cholera is now projected to plague the country for at least another decade. 'By refusing to acknowledge responsibility, the United Nations jeopardizes its standing and moral authority in Haiti and in other countries where its personnel are deployed,' writes the Washington Post Editorial Board adding that without 'speaking frankly about its own responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti, the organization does a disservice to Haiti and Haitians, who deserve better.'"
They're poor as hell and need aid of their own and they have rebels.
Bwahahahahahahaha. The UN lost it's moral authority decades ago, when it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Cholera is one of those things that can easily be kept at bay with education and best practices.
1) Boil your water before drinking or using in any food that will not otherwise be cooked thoroughly.
2) Develop better latrine habits
These two things can go a long, long way towards beating the epidemic.
=Smidge=
Even if they did accidentally bring cholera in, it's the terrible state of sanitation in Haiti that has turned it into an epidemic. Haiti would have likely seen cholera even if the UN hadn't come in. Someone would have just brought it in later. And I dare say they help the outsiders have provided has far outweighed any harm they've done.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Know what to do with poop. If you don't know this, you can't help other people do it. When you learn what to do with poop, then you can help other people with their poop.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The comments back when the storm hit were: 'Haiti is a deforested muddy shithole, and that is part of why the damage was so bad.'
Putting that into perspective: Maybe there wasn't adequate supplies of combustibles to keep their water clean.
Assuming their drinking water WAS clean, who's to say they weren't doing other stupid things, like bathing/fishing in the contaminated water and inadvertantly passing it on via whatever else they were doing. (It's not like you'd need more than a few tainted items to spread it like the plague during a disaster like that.)
First, there's no evidence that UN has started the cholera epidemic. No bacterial strain genotyping has been performed. Second, in such cases a cholera epidemic is more-or-less a certainty - it makes no sense to search for the index case, especially because choleric bacteria occur naturally.
Bwahahahahahahaha. The UN lost it's moral authority decades ago, when it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
Both deserve to be bashed.
The UN claims immunity under the "Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations", which is largely what it sounds like.
However, Article VIII "Settlement of Disputes" states that:
Section 29. The United Nations shall make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement of :
(a) disputes arising out of contracts or other disputes of a private law character to which the United Nations is a party;
(b) disputes involving any official of the United Nations who by reason of his official position enjoys immunity, if immunity has not been waived by the Secretary-General.
Section 30. All differences arising out of the interpretation or application of the present convention shall be referred to the International Court of Justice, unless in any case it is agreed by the parties to have recourse to another mode of settlement. If a difference arises between the United Nations on the one hand and a Member on the other hand, a request shall be made for an advisory opinion on any legal question involved in accordance with Article 96 of the Charter and Article 65 of the Statue of the Court. The opinion given by the Court shall be accepted as decisive by the parties.
So, the Convention under which they claim immunity requires them to "make provisions for appropriate modes of settlement"(something which apparently hasn't happened since 1946, no doubt Coming Real Soon Now) and makes the UN an entity subject to ICJ jurisdiction in the event of a dispute between a UN member state and the UN itself.
It certainly is the case that the random Nepalese troops who actually introduced the Cholera enjoy diplomat-grade immunity under this convention (and, even if they didn't, their actual crime is probably some sort of relatively minor sanitary code violation); but the assertion that the UN, as an organization, enjoys immunity is suspect at best.
The article said the Nepalese were billeted at a Haitian miltary base with poor sanitation. "...Because of inadequate water and sanitation facilities at the base, cholera-infected sewage contaminated the Artibonite River..." implying the Haitians had been dumping sewage into the river themselves at least since the disaster. This was an accident. I'm no big huge fan of the UN, but they were there to *help* fer goshsakes, and for Haiti to attack them is wrong.
I apologize for this comment. It was not me who wrote the parent comment. This is what happens when you leave ./ open with a vindictive coworker lurking about.
http://bash.org/?5775
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
We just killed tens of thousands of people. woopsy!
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Lack of proper sanitation facilities and lack of fuel (or other means) to decontaminate water often go together. Sure, education is great, but what do you do with the sewage of many thousands of people in a very small space and scarce resources?
(ac) Solid gold, upvote for you.
(ac) DISREGARD THAT, WRONG WEBSITE.
It's a mistake to point the finger at the United Nations. As the original editorial noted, Haiti does not have a system to deliver clean water. Any time you have 90 percent of a population drinking from the sewer it's only a matter of time before you have an outbreak. Past efforts to build a modern clean-water delivery system have been thwarted by civil war, endemic corruption and general ineptitude
Haiti doesn't need another failed aid project. What Haiti needs is a bureaucracy to construct and manage their own infrastructure. Haiti also needs to build a judicial infrastructure that's capable of rooting out corruption.
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
No. It lists its authority when they did nothing worthwhile during the Rwanda genocide and the Bosnia genocide. TWO genocides and they did nothing.
The UN deserves to be laughed at and not be taken seriously.
The Palestine/Israel situation is another reason. But not due to bashing Israel, but for not being able to do anything at all to solve the conflict.
I remember reading an article perhaps 9 months after the cholera outbreak, I think in the New England Journal of Medicine about how the epidemiologists had identified the source of the cholera infection to the Nepalese troops. It's fairly absurd that the UN has continued to deny that this happened for well over 2 years.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1012928
um the UN is just a cover for the US. and fuck Israel.
Your money won't disappear this time, honest!
Oh, get over it. The world does not revolve around the US or Israel, and neither does the UN, but there's certainly some grounds for bashing here. Every country needs a good bashing every once in a while, like when they do something stupidly illegal. If the US or Israel or any other country always abided by internationally agreed-upon laws, then there wouldn't be any grounds for bashing by the UN.
Picking a couple of examples, where is it written in international law that it's okay to establish settlements in occupied territory, on the opposite side of a cease-fire line? Where is it written that it's okay to send armed drones into sovereign territory to kill alleged or avowed terrorists without the permission of the host country? Oh yes, there are real terrorists there that are causing problems and nobody's saying to do nothing. That's not the issue. The issue is whether it is permissible to violate international law to go get them, or whether the UN shouldn't scold you if you do ("free pass if for sake of terrorists" isn't an international law either). And despite however illegitimate the UN supposedly is, that didn't stop the US from seeking and getting justification for occupying Afghanistan for legitimate reasons when it was attacked, and practically the entire world was supportive. Apparently the UN is a convenience when it agrees with you, but not if it doesn't.
What you've got here is a neighborhood asshole complaining about other people sometimes ganging up and calling them an asshole who doesn't follow the rules, and doing so for years and years in a public forum. Boo hoo. Deal with it. Complying with international law that your country has signed is an alternative option rather than complaining about the rest of the world's opinion when you don't.
What a phrase.
Shh, don't get in Nutria's attempt to present the US and Israel as the persecuted victims of the UN's bullying.
He's busy justifying his moral outrage which he will use to suppress any criticism or moral qualms he might have.
It's the typical action of tyrants.
Hey racist man: lock ur screen.
Could your possessive pronoun lose its apostrophe?
Yeah, I totally recall how the UN wasn't involved in bosnia at all. Or maybe that's the opposite of what is true
Picking a couple of examples, where is it written in international law that it's okay to
Nowhere. There is no such thing, never has been, never will be. By definition. The only way for there to be "international law" is for there to be an "international government", and once you have that it's not "international" any more it's just one big empire. The phrase "international law" is just a short way of summing up the idea of a collection of agreements, treaties, etc. which have the appearance of being equal to law- it's still up to each country to pass their own laws (or not) and to decide if they want to go along with the rest of the "international community".
Where is it written that it's okay to send armed drones into sovereign territory to
It doesn't HAVE to be written any where. It's a decision which is up to the country whose borders were violated- if they're OK with it then it's nobody else's place to bitch about it.
The point of the UN is not to act as a world government. It's a forum where the major world powers can get together and hash things out through diplomacy instead of everybody just showing up to the Party with bombs and guns.
*lost, not lists. Sorry.
Bullshit. They did nothing. They released resolution afterwards declaring them genocides and tried to prosecute to aggressors. But that's it.
Yes, they declared to extend their mission to serbian Bosnia. In reality and effectively they just watched and did nothing worthwhile for weeks and months.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_Massacre
"In April 1993, the United Nations declared the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in the Drina Valley of north-eastern Bosnia a "safe area" under UN protection. However, in July 1995, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), represented on the ground by a 400-strong contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, Dutchbat, did not prevent the town's capture by the VRS and the subsequent massacre."
"Then in 2005, in a message to the tenth anniversary commemoration of the genocide, the Secretary-General of the United Nations noted that, while blame lay first and foremost with those who planned and carried out the massacre and those who assisted and harboured them, great nations had failed to respond adequately, the UN itself had made serious errors of judgement and the tragedy of Srebrenica would haunt the UN's history forever"
In a nutshell : you are talking bullshit, you don't deserve the mod points and the UN did nothing. End of.
For the same reason they always have. Because they are poor as hell and they would rather kill and die in order to send home an honest paycheck than beg the rich for potentially toxic aid.
US doesn't play by any rules, moral or otherwise. Neither do most other countries, but they get in more trouble than they can handle if they go to far, because they are not as powerful as the US. Therefore, any international body with any moral authority at all is naturally going to spend most of its time pointing out US wrong-doing. It would be the same thing if some other country was most powerful - that country would then most likely start doing more bad things and would therefore constantly be reprimanded for them. So the thing you think disqualifies the UN from having moral authority is the very thing that any international body with moral authority would necessarily have to do. Your view of the world is up-side down.
Fuck "religious purity". That's nonsense and has nothing to do with morals. Quite the opposite.
And WTF is "genetic purity"? Are you an asshole Nazi, motherfucker?
No. It lists its authority when they did nothing worthwhile during the Rwanda genocide and the Bosnia genocide. TWO genocides and they did nothing.
The UN deserves to be laughed at and not be taken seriously.
The Palestine/Israel situation is another reason. But not due to bashing Israel, but for not being able to do anything at all to solve the conflict.
The UN is just the international community of countries. If they can not agree on a action to take, that's the fault of all the states and their communication. Don't act like the UN is some external entity. It's just the states!
So I read what you and GP say as
I don't think that makes any sense.
Yes, it is fair to criticize when intervening action is not taken, and we can also criticize that unanimous agreement is necessary. Latest example: Syria.
When criticizing China and Russia however, you have to make sure not to be hypocritical. The US is picking the best options for itself on many other issues: Isreals arbitrary settling policies, ignoring international treaties, not subjecting itself to international courts, no extradition, starting illegal wars (Iraq, Afghanistan).
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
um the UN is just a cover for the US. and fuck Israel.
I don't think so, relations between the UN and the US haven't been really good for some time now, and Israel has shown time and time again that it doesn't a fuck what the UN says. The UN is just a fucknut of an org run by fucknut politicians.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Nowhere. There is no such thing, never has been, never will be.
Maritime Law is infact just such a thing. Also the world court in the Haig would disagree with you.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
No, just trollbait
Spreading deadly diseases from country to country -- allowing them to evolve increasing virulence through horizontal transmission -- is a small price to pay for open borders.
Seastead this.
it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
How does this get a +4? The US uses UN resolutions to justify and defend its attacks on other countries.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'll take the UN over some illiterate US citizen that can't even punctuate, any day!
Bullshit. You forgot to hit the checkbox and now everyone knows you are a worthless, racist human being.
Bwahahahahahahaha. The UN lost it's moral authority decades ago, when it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
Both deserve to be bashed.
totally agree
The U.N. is significantly worse than you say. As the majority of member states are thief-nations, they use the U.N. to weaken and steal from the U.S.A..
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We're from the government, and we're here to help
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When cholera was first found in Haiti the media laughingly portrayed the Haitian whom claim the UN was responsible as conspiracy theorists.
Another great article by Butt Pickens dot COM
You hand out shovels and let them dig their own pit toilets.
This isn't complicated and is a life or death issue. I'm shocked that Gerka's didn't know to do this for themselves.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I read an article on this last year - I thought everyone knew that the UN latrines were to blame for the cholera outbreak in Haiti.
No, they don't. Bashing does nothing, especially while countries run by brutal dictatorships are allowed membership on human rights committees.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
>You hand out shovels and let them dig their own pit toilets.
FALSE. This works in rural areas, but not in refugee camps, or cities with hundreds of thousands or millions of people.
Poverty is fundamentally different from your life.
Bwahahahahahahaha. The UN lost it's moral authority decades ago, when it became nothing more than a organ to bash Israel and the US.
Both deserve to be bashed.
totally agree
Possibly.
But why should the US pay so much to be attacked and belittled? Can we not get that for free?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
"starting illegal wars (Iraq, Afghanistan)."
Iraq is fair, Afghanistan is not, because the latter was almost unanimously approved by the UN and was supported by a plethora of other countries because of that.
If you have more people crapping, you also need more people digging.
Pit toilets scale.
The problem is pit toilets are in the commons, without a mechanism to reward the diggers, nobody digs. They all get sick.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Sigh, I suspect it's just another Warhammer 40K player.
Try picturing a My Little Pony saying: "Moral authority rightly belongs only to those who have the strength of will and the genetic and religious purity to wield it. Now hand me an apple!"
Who is John Cabal?
Perhaps you could quote that thing. Cause I read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiralty_law and it says nothing even remotely like that.
In this country, there are many libertarians (particularly on the right) who believe that, on principle, the government should never do anything without unanimous consent.
In other words, we shouldn't have to pay taxes just because a majority decides to do it; we should only pay taxes if there is unanimous agreement.
That's one of the justifications for proposition 13 in California, which required (not a unanimous but) a 2/3 majority of the legislature to pass a tax bill. The stated purpose of that, and the result, was to shrink (or destroy) the government, and it succeeded. Among other things, it destroyed the California public university system.
So that shows you the limitations -- some would say failure -- of rejecting majority rule.
The problem here is that Haiti is very poor, and think that having a drinking water facility without the proper filtration should be an excuse to blame someone else for bringing in germs, viruses or bacteria. The thing to remember is if your infrastructure is badly built from the beginning without having any contingency plans setup, you will get burned, and it will only be your own fault.
If i go on a trip and have only enough fuel to make it to a specific place, and then stop to pick up a hitchhiker, adding more weight to my car, leaving me to run out of fuel before the next gas station, should i blame the hitchhiker? No one forced you to pick him up. If you were smart enough to have a gerry can in the back with just a bit more fuel to get you to that gas station, which most people do before long treks, you avoid this situation.
Having one source of drinking water with no special reserves setup and no proper filtration in place to catch all the contaminants, leads you to have this situation.
Dont blame someone for helping when you should have helped yourself before they got there. Just refuse the help next time if you are concerned they will bring disease with them. No one forced you to take their help.
As for the UN, there should be more testing in place for who they send in, this could easily have been avoided as well from the other side of the coin. We had firefighters and cops from here go and help over there, but i can guarantee you no one tested them properly for any sort of communicable diseases.
Western nations have been trying to eliminate Haiti since its independence but they keep fails. I predict locusts are next.
You mean the USA is using the UN to steal from other countries. In particular resources like oil.
Or using a war as a scapegoat and distraction to ensure reelection.
The USA is the biggest theft in human history.
'Murica.
What enrages me is there is still no clean water or sanitation in Haiti, three years after the disaster. No centralized planning and control, like that a government can provide, and the fact that water treatment plants and sewage systems are not 'sexy" means thousands are dying. It is like a major city in the 1800's, before modern municipal services were built. Haiti is a poster child for expecting self organization, the NGO industrial complex, and the private sector sort things out. A disaster upon a disaster.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
You have evidently never been to a 3rd world shithole with a lot of rain and mud. One strong tropical downpour and all your shit, all your holes, all your *shit*, and half the people you know are moving downhill and downstream.
It might be hard to find.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010%E2%80%932011_Haiti_cholera_outbreak
You do know that the US is giving quite a substantial part of the UN budget. One would think that is the UN was full of thieves and that they where stealing a you would say, The US would just stop supporting the UN. Make no mistake the UN exist because of the US. It's mostly a puppet not the other way around.
What everyone's forgetting here (and it may not have been in that article) is that this strain of cholera is antibiotic-resistant, a "superbug." This may account for how bad it is, and it also hadn't really been seen in Haiti, let alone the western hemisphere yet, this particularly nasty strain of cholera.
http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-un-soldiers-brought-deadly-superbug-americas-194141189--abc-news.html
the problem was that what was essentially a hole in the ground sanitation system went to the waterways used for water...
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
No. It lists its authority when they did nothing worthwhile during the Rwanda genocide and the Bosnia genocide. TWO genocides and they did nothing.
The UN deserves to be laughed at and not be taken seriously.
The excuse is it wasn't really their job at the time.
The primary role of the UN to avoid war. They do this by being a place for international diplomacy and by arbitrating international discussions around trade and borders.
A country committing genocide within its own borders isn't really part of the original job description. It's only now that active international conflicts are virtually extinct that we have the opportunity to start contemplating the UN taking the role of an international police and stabilization force. Rwanda and Bosnia are two of the main reasons we made that decision.
I stole this Sig
Although each legal jurisdiction usually has its own enacted legislation governing maritime matters, admiralty law is characterized by a significant amount of international law developed in recent decades, including numerous multilateral treaties.
Treaties are international law.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
There are people who apparently think Flamebait means "what Arabs and Egyptians have been regularly saying for 65 years".
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Oh no! I'm being bashed by the UN! Maybe they'll issue another binding resolution! *shiver*
-Israel & US
How are human rights supposed to improve in those countries if they are not involved in the process? Hint: They're not there to run the committees. This is diplomacy 101 stuff - you really should know this before lambasting the very process you seem to be calling for, doing nothing but showing your ignorance on the way.
What process? Being on a "moral" UN panel just gives diplomatic cover against accusations of bad behavior.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1