Seeking U.N. Accountability and Human Rights Precautionary Measures for the Cholera Epidemic in Haiti

The GHJP, with the Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School and the Association Haïtienne de Droit de l’Environnement, released Peacekeeping without Accountability in 2013. This report addresses the responsibility of the United Nations (U.N.) for the cholera epidemic in Haiti—one of the largest cholera epidemics in modern history. The report provides a comprehensive analysis of the evidence that the U.N. brought cholera to Haiti, relevant international legal and humanitarian standards necessary to understand U.N. accountability, and steps that the U.N. and other key national and international actors must take to rectify this harm.

Research, writing, and editing for this report was carried out by a team of students and professors from the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Public Health. Over a one year period, student authors also conducted extensive consultations with Haitians affected by the epidemic, as well as national and international journalists, medical doctors, advocates, government officials, and other legal professionals with firsthand experience in the epidemic and its aftermath. In March 2013, students and faculty traveled to Haiti to carry out additional investigations. The Yale student and faculty team presented stakeholders in and outside of Haiti with a draft summary and outline of the report for review, discussion and comment. The final draft of the report incorporates comments and feedback from all of these consultations.

In 2016, GHJP Co-Directors Gregg Gonsalves and Alice M. Miller co-authored, along with other faculty from the Yale School of Public Health, an open-access peer-reviewed article using computational modeling to investigate whether pre-deployment intervention strategies for peacekeeping troops coming from countries where cholera is endemic, which had been recommended but not implemented due to uncertainty about their effectiveness, would have impacted the likelihood of the Haiti cholera epidemic. They found that screening, chemoprophylaxis, and vaccination are all effective strategies to prevent cholera introduction during large-scale personnel deployments such as that precipitating the 2010 Haiti outbreak.

Responding to the resurgence of the imported cholera epidemic in 2022 in Haiti, the GHJP submitted a request for ‘precautionary measures’ to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in March 2023, with the Bureau des Droits Humains en Haïti, Réseau National de Défense des Droits de l'Homme, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Miami Law Human Rights Clinic, and co-signing advocates and attorneys.

The submission sought immediate protection for the community of the Prison Civile de Port-au-Prince (‘the National Penitentiary’), including pretrial detainees, others incarcerated, and those working at, or visiting the prison (i.e. those at high risk of cholera because of the conditions of jails and prison as detailed below). It aimed to build on the set of measures requested in a submission to the IACHR by the Bureau des Droits Humains en Haïti in 2022. The demands in the petition were developed through many conversations with advocates and experts in Haiti and the United States, specifically around incarceration and pretrial detention, as well as the incarceration of people deported from the United States to Haiti. Additionally, these demands reflect the analysis and input of Haitian organizations who work to foster democracy, stability, autonomy, and health justice in the nation.

As the GHJP highlights in its cover note to the submission, an ongoing goal of circulating the submission is to ensure that the failure of formal legal processes does not stop engagement, understanding and advocacy on the health justice violations. We believe the submission has important information for people and organizations who focus on incarceration, public health, and/or Haitian democracy and sovereignty. We hope that by sharing this as a resource we are amplifying the concerns and visions of the members of the coalition whom we worked with, and offering research and recommendations which might be useful to other advocacy projects, especially as a efforts to restore order may be framed as ‘law and order’ and revert to overuse of incarceration.

Publications

GHJP. Cover Note to Request for Precautionary Measures to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2024). (Available in Kreyòl, English).

GHJP, Bureau des Droits Humains en Haïti, Réseau National de Défense des Droits de l'Homme, Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, Alternative Chance/Chans Altenativ, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Miami Law Clinics et al. Request for Precautionary Measures to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Persons Detained Unfairly and At Risk of Cholera in the Prison Civile de Port-Au-Prince (‘the National Penitentiary’), Haiti (2023). (Available in Kreyòl, French, English).

Chan, R., Johnson, T., Krishnaswami, C., Oliker-Friedland, S., Perez, C. Peacekeeping without Accountability: The United Nations' Responsibility for the Haitian Cholera Epidemic. Transnational Development Clinic, Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, Yale Law School; GHJP; and Association HaitÏenne de Droit de L’Environnment (2013).

Lewnard, J., Antillon, M., Gonsalves, G., Miller, A., Ko, A., Pitzer, V. Strategies to Prevent Cholera Introduction during International Personnel Deployments: A Computational Modeling Analysis Based on the 2010 Haiti Outbreak. PLOS Medicine (January 2016).