AN EXPLANATION OF THE FACTIONS  
 

[ DONATE TO RMN ] [ View Thread ] [ Archive Search Page ] [ RMN Reading Room ] [ CGI Media News Room ] [ SUBSCRIBE TO RMN ]

RMN is Reader Supported

Our Goal for
MAR 6 - APR 5:
$1,500

Powered by FundRazr

Click Widget
or Click Here to contribute.

Checks & Money Orders:

Raye Allan Smith
P.O. Box 95
Ashtabula, OH 44005


Users Online:
114

Who Founded RMNews?


Dewitt Jones' Video
"Celebrate What's Right
With The World"


"When the
Starships Fly!"

Listen at YouTube


The Theme for The Obergon Chronicles

Listen at YouTube


The Obergon Chronicles ebook


RUMOR MILL
NEWS RADIO


CGI ROOM
Common Ground
Independent Media


WHAT ARE
THE FACTIONS?


THE AMAZING
RAYELAN ALLAN


BIORHYTHMS

LOTTO PICKS

OTHER WAYS TO DONATE





RUMOR MILL NEWS AGENTS WHO'VE BEEN INTERVIEWED ON RUMOR MILL NEWS RADIO

______________

NOVEMBER 2008

Kevin Courtois - Kcbjedi
______________

Dr Robin Falkov

______________

Melinda Pillsbury Hr1

Melinda Pillsbury Hr2

______________

Daneen Peterson

______________

Daneen Peterson

______________

Disclosure Hr1

Disclosure Hr2
______________

Scribe
______________

in_PHI_nitti
______________

Jasmine Hr1
Jasmine Hr2
______________

Tom Chittum Hr1
Tom Chittum Hr2
______________

Kevin Courtois
______________

Dr Syberlux
______________

Gary Larrabee Hr1
Gary Larrabee Hr2
______________

Kevin Courtois
______________

Pravdaseeker Hr1
Pravdaseeker Hr2
______________

DECEMBER 2008

Tom Chittum
______________

Crystal River
______________

Stewart Swerdlow Hr1
Stewart Swerdlow Hr2
______________

Janet Swerdlow Hr1
Janet Swerdlow Hr2
______________

Dr. Robin Falkov Hr1
Dr. Robin Falkov Hr2
Dr. Robin Falkov Hr3

JANUARY 2009 ______________

Patriotlad
______________

Patriotlad
______________

Crystal River
______________

Patriotlad
______________

Dr. Robin Falcov
______________

Patriotlad

FEBRUARY 2009

Find UFOs, The Apocalypse, New World Order, Political Analysis,
Alternative Health, Armageddon, Conspiracies, Prophecies, Spirituality,
Home Schooling, Home Mortgages and more, in:

Rumor Mill News Reading Room, Current Archive

U.N. 'Admits' Role in Cholera Epidemic in Haiti

Posted By: RumorMail
Date: Friday, 19-Aug-2016 12:57:17
www.rumormill.news/54408

For the first time since a cholera epidemic believed to be imported by United Nations peacekeepers began killing thousands of Haitians nearly six years ago, the office of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has acknowledged that the United Nations played a role in the initial outbreak and that a “significant new set of U.N. actions” will be needed to respond to the crisis.

The deputy spokesman for the secretary general, Farhan Haq, said in an email this week that “over the past year, the U.N. has become convinced that it needs to do much more regarding its own involvement in the initial outbreak and the suffering of those affected by cholera.” He added that a “new response will be presented publicly within the next two months, once it has been fully elaborated, agreed with the Haitian authorities and discussed with member states.”

The statement comes on the heels of a confidential report sent to Mr. Ban by a longtime United Nations adviser on Aug. 8. Written by Philip Alston, a New York University law professor who serves as one of a few dozen experts, known as special rapporteurs, who advise the organization on human rights issues, the draft language stated plainly that the epidemic “would not have broken out but for the actions of the United Nations.”

The secretary general’s acknowledgment, by contrast, stopped short of saying that the United Nations specifically caused the epidemic. Nor does it indicate a change in the organization’s legal position that it is absolutely immune from legal actions, including a federal lawsuit brought in the United States on behalf of cholera victims seeking billions in damages stemming from the Haiti crisis.
Continue reading the main story

ADVERTISEMENT
Related Coverage

U.S. Court Upholds United Nations’ Immunity in Cholera Suit AUG. 18, 2016

Opinion Editorial

The Cholera Epidemic the U.N. Left Behind in Haiti JULY 6, 2016

Lawmakers Urge John Kerry to Press U.N. for Haiti Cholera Response JUNE 29, 2016

U.N. Struggles to Stem Haiti Cholera Epidemic APRIL 19, 2014

Haiti’s Cholera Outraced the Experts and Tainted the U.N. MARCH 31, 2012

But it represents a significant shift after more than five years of high-level denial of any involvement or responsibility of the United Nations in the outbreak, which has killed at least 10,000 people and sickened hundreds of thousands. Cholera victims suffer from dehydration caused by severe diarrhea or vomiting.

Special rapporteurs’ reports are technically independent guidance, which the United Nations can accept or reject. United Nations officials have until the end of this week to respond to the report, which will then go through revisions, but the statement suggests a new receptivity to its criticism.

In the 19-page report, obtained from an official who had access to it, Mr. Alston took issue with the United Nations’ public handling of the outbreak, which was first documented in mid-October 2010, shortly after people living along the Meille River began dying from the disease.
Continue reading the main story

The first victims lived near a base housing 454 United Nations peacekeepers freshly arrived from Nepal, where a cholera outbreak was underway, and waste from the base often leaked into the river. Numerous scientists have since argued that the base was the only plausible source of the outbreak — whose real death toll, one study found, could be much higher than the official numbers state — but United Nations officials have consistently insisted that its origins remain up for debate.

Mr. Alston wrote that the United Nations’ Haiti cholera policy “is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible and politically self-defeating.” He added, “It is also entirely unnecessary.” The organization’s continuing denial and refusal to make reparations to the victims, he argued, “upholds a double standard according to which the U.N. insists that member states respect human rights, while rejecting any such responsibility for itself.”

He said, “It provides highly combustible fuel for those who claim that U.N. peacekeeping operations trample on the rights of those being protected, and it undermines both the U.N.’s overall credibility and the integrity of the Office of the Secretary-General.”

Mr. Alston went beyond criticizing the Department of Peacekeeping Operations to blame the entire United Nations system. “As the magnitude of the disaster became known, key international officials carefully avoided acknowledging that the outbreak had resulted from discharges from the camp,” he noted.

His most severe criticism was reserved for the organization’s Office of Legal Affairs, whose advice, he wrote, “has been permitted to override all of the other considerations that militate so powerfully in favor of seeking a constructive and just solution.” Its interpretations, he said, have “trumped the rule of law.”

Mr. Alston also argued in his report that, as The New York Times has reported, the United Nations’ cholera eradication program has failed. Infection rates have been rising every year in Haiti since 2014, as the organization struggles to raise the $2.27 billion it says is needed to eradicate the disease from member states. No major water or sanitation projects have been completed in Haiti; two pilot wastewater processing plants built there in the wake of the epidemic quickly closed because of a lack of donor funds.

In a separate internal report released days ago after being withheld for nearly a year, United Nations auditors said a quarter of the sites run by the peacekeepers with the organization’s Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or Minustah, that they had visited were still discharging their waste into public canals as late as 2014, four years after the epidemic began.

“Victims are living in fear because the disease is still out there,” Mario Joseph, a prominent Haitian human rights lawyer representing cholera victims, told demonstrators in Port-au-Prince last month. He added, “If the Nepalese contingent returns to defecate in the water again, they will get the disease again, only worse.”

In 2011, when families of 5,000 Haitian cholera victims petitioned the United Nations for redress, its Office of Legal Affairs simply declared their claims “not receivable.” (Mr. Alston called that argument “wholly unconvincing in legal terms.”)

Those families and others then sued the United Nations, including Mr. Ban and the former Minustah chief Edmond Mulet, in federal court in New York. (In November, Mr. Ban promoted Mr. Mulet to be his chief of staff.) The United Nations refused to appear in court, claiming diplomatic immunity under its charter, leaving Justice Department lawyers to defend it instead. That case is now pending a decision from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

The redress demanded by families of the 10,000 people killed and 800,000 affected would reach $40 billion, Mr. Alston wrote — and that figure does not take into account “those certain to die and be infected in the years ahead.”

“Since this is almost five times the total annual budget for peacekeeping worldwide, it is a figure that is understandably seen as prohibitive and unrealistic,” he said. Still, he argued: “The figure of $40 billion should stand as a warning of the consequences that could follow if national courts become convinced that the abdication policy is not just unconscionable but also legally unjustified. The best way to avoid that happening is for the United Nations to offer an appropriate remedy.”

Mr. Alston, who declined to comment for this article, will present the final report at the opening of the General Assembly in September, when presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from nearly every country gather at United Nations headquarters in New York.

Mr. Haq said the secretary general’s office “wanted to take this opportunity to welcome this vital report,” which he added “will be a valuable contribution to the U.N. as we work towards a significant new set of U.N. actions.”

Read More



RMN is an RA production.

Articles In This Thread

U.N. 'Admits' Role in Cholera Epidemic in Haiti
RumorMail -- Friday, 19-Aug-2016 12:57:17
Reader: UN placed 454 Nepalese health workers in one particular rural village, knowing that there was at that time a CHOLERA EPIDEMIC in Ne
RumorMail -- Saturday, 20-Aug-2016 00:47:01

The only pay your RMN moderators receive
comes from ads.
If you're using an ad blocker, please consider putting RMN in
your ad blocker's whitelist.


Serving Truth and Freedom
Worldwide since 1996
 
Politically Incorrect News
Stranger than Fiction
Usually True!


Powered
by FundRazr
Click Widget
or Click Here to contribute.


Organic Sulfur 4 Health

^


AGENTS WEBPAGES

Provided free to RMN Agents

Organic Sulfur 4 Health

^


AGENTS WEBPAGES

Provided free to RMN Agents



[ DONATE TO RMN ] [ View Thread ] [ Archive Search Page ] [ RMN Reading Room ] [ CGI Media News Room ] [ SUBSCRIBE TO RMN ]

Rumor Mill News Reading Room, Current Archive is maintained by Forum Admin with WebBBS 5.12.

If you can't find what you're looking
for using our RMN search, try the DuckDuckGo search below:


AN EXPLANATION OF THE FACTIONS