UN hit with cash demand over Haiti cholera - Americas - Al Jazeera English

Prior to the arrival of UN soldiers in 2010, there were no reported cases of cholera in Haiti "for over 50 years" [EPA]

The United Nations has been hit with a demand for hundreds of millions of dollars in reparations because of a year-old cholera outbreak that has killed more than 6,700 Haitians.

The demand was made on Tuesday on behalf of more than 5,000 Haitian cholera victims and their families in a petition filed at UN headquarters in New York by the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

The human rights group said the peacekeeping soldiers were not adequately screened by the United Nations.
The human rights group argues that infected UN peacekeeping troops from Nepal, where cholera is endemic, caused the outbreak by dumping untreated waste from their rural base camp into a tributary of the most important river in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation.

"The cholera outbreak is directly attributable to the negligence, gross negligence, recklessness and deliberate indifference for the health and lives of Haiti's citizens by the United Nations and its subsidiary, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH)," the petition said.

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UN hit with cash demand over Haiti cholera - Americas - Al Jazeera English