As
UNSC Goes
Ceremonial With Haiti's Officials, French Suez & Bollore, Staff Reapply
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video
Port au Prince,
June 23 – When
the UN
Security
Council
visited
Haiti's
Presidential
Palace on
Thursday, they
heard about
the cholera
the UN
brought,
specifically
that the $40
million
remaining in
the MINUSTAH
mission's
budget should
remain behind.
This was
emphasized
after the
meeting with
President
Moise by his
acting (for a
day?) foreign
minister, and
was the
subject of the
sole
questioner
allowed.
Video here.
Things seem routinized. This
too: in the MINUSTAH mission
the talk is of re-applying for
posts in the new, smaller MINUJUSTH
replacement set to start
October 16, 2017. The UN's
presence become routinized.
There is a former star of the
UN Budget Committee, now
working on political affairs;
there's Security from other
Security Council trips - one
in which a UN Security officer
fired a bullet inside the UN
plane, leaving Ambassadors and
the press on a bus ride from
Goma to Kigali in Rwanda.
There are long-time UN
communications people and
ex-pat journalists. There is a
dismissive or perhaps
fatalistic view of those
Haitians protesting the UN's
presence and impact. Then
there are Haitians striving,
setting up small businesses in
nooks and crannies by the side
of the road, while French
business people fly in for
contracts, assisted by their
country's ambassador Elisabeth
Beton, who spoke June 22 on TV
Metropole about Bollore, Total
and Suez. What is the UN's
role in this? After the June
22 meeting, Haiti's acting
foreign minister spoke on
cholera, that the $40 million
unspent by MINUSTAH should
remain in-country. But will
it? In the UN Budget Committee
there's talk against it, as a
bad precedent. Wasn't bringing
cholera, and then denying it
for six years, a worse
precedent? Sui generis.
Earlier on Thursday morning,
the country's booming voiced
Ambassador to the UN was at
the airport to greet the
Council members. Protests,
too, awaited - although
MINUSTAH staff, and a
Haiti-based European
journalist, mocked the protest
as small. In the minibus
that took the Council members
up into the hills to the Royal
Oasis Hotel, the talk was of
the wind-down of the MINUSTAH
mission, begun after the
ouster of President Aristide
in 2004, of access for
interpreters but barely - five
minutes at each meeting? - for
the press. a
meeting was
held with the
UN Country
Team.
The Press was
ushered about
amid generic
statistics
from the
Deputy SRSG. Civil
society, however, has been
chiming in with the Press.
When UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres held a press
conference on June 20, Inner
City Press about the UN having
brought cholera to Haiti under
his predecessor Ban Ki-moon
but now reneging even on what
Ban belatedly proposed for
individual reparations. Inner
City Press mentioned upcoming
protests in Haiti that it will
be covering from there, June
22 and 23, accompanying the UN
Security Council mission which
took off from JFK airport
early on June 22. Photo here,
Periscope video here.
Guterres announced that he was
just then - minutes later the
announcement went out - naming
as a new special envoy on
Haiti Josette Sheeran,
formerly the director of the
UN World Food Program and now
the head of the Asia Society.
Video here.
Transcript here.
He seemed to say the UN was
never going to compensate
individuals or families
impacted by the cholera the UN
brought. And the demands are
for more than that: here's a
sample list, in advance of the
protest(s): "1. Close the
MINUSTAH acknowledging its
failure
2. Cancel the MINUJUSTH
articulated following the ques
Chapter 7 is a contradiction
with the mandate defined
3. re-articulate globally the
concept of relations between
the UN and Haiti and
especially among Latin
American countries and Haiti.
Recalling the generous
internationalist commitment of
the founders of our country
and concrete, substantial and
decisive solidarity offered to
Miranda and Simon Bolivar
4. Launch a process of
compensation, justice and
reparation contemplating the
numerous victims and
destruction caused by this
military occupation of 13
years.
5. Compensate victims of rape,
men, women and children were
raped or processes used in
sexual exploitation
6. Support the thousands of
women who have babies and
children / children without
parents because soldiers and
police of MINUSTAH left
without parents assume their
responsibilities without
leaving their addresses
7. compensate the families of
citizens / citizens killed by
the introduction of cholera by
Nepalese MINUSTAH troops.
We're talking about at least
20,000 bodies (the official
figure underestimated speaks
of nearly 10,000 dead)
8. Compensate survivors were
infected by cholera by but did
not die but their lives were
severely affected (we're
talking about more than
800,000 people)
9. To compensate the country
for the huge economic losses
caused by the presence of
cholera during these long 7
years.
10. Invest to universalize
access to drinking water for
the entire population
11. To strengthen the system
of public health and
sanitation." On June 21 Inner
City Press asked Guterres'
deputy spokesman Farhan Haq to
clarify. UN
Video here,
from Minute
16:21. From
the UN transcript:
Inner City Press: this was
something that the
Secretary-General said on the
record when I asked him about
the seeming change in the
cholera in Haiti plan.
And he said that that policy
was announced by his
predecessor and had two
dimensions; one is fighting
cholera, and the other is the
possibility to support
communities impacted. It
was devised not as individual
support. And just, since
then, I went back and actually
looked at the November
A/71/620 document, and there’s
a whole section on individual
support. It was called
track 2B. So I just
wanted to--
Deputy Spokesman: And I
was here at the time.
And I remember the discussions
that the former
Secretary-General, Ban
Ki-moon, had about this.
And, at that point, it was not
determined whether it would be
individual or
community-based. Even at
that point, I believe the
discussion was towards
community-based. So
that’s something that’s… a
process that’s been crafted.
Inner City Press: I wish
I’d had that document in front
of me when he answered,
because there are many people
that are in Haiti that have
seen the new announcement made
by Amina Mohammed as a
retrenchment, as a taking back
of that before even consulting
people. Mario Joseph and
others have put out a press
release; they’re protesting on
Thursday. So I wanted to
just get your quote before
that protest, that at one time
the idea of individual
reparations to people harmed
by cholera was in a UN
document as being considered
and it’s now not being
considered at all?
Deputy Spokesman: I
wouldn’t say that it’s not
being considered at all.
And I wouldn’t say that
initially it was something
that was devised as the
primary idea. This is
something that’s been under
consideration. It
remains under consideration,
but the primary focus, for
reasons that were described at
the end of last year and again
at the start of this year,
have been
community-based. And if
you look at what Ban Ki-moon
said in December, again, it
mentions the community-based
approach.
But the UN
document in November 2016 has a
Track 2B, individual. Here's the
beginning of the press release
for the protests:
"Port-au-Prince: Haitian cholera
victims and their advocates
called on the UN Security
Council to deliver on the
promise of a new,
victim-centered approach to
cholera during its visit to
Haiti this week, by meeting
directly with victims and
committing to funding the $400
million initiative before
MINUSTAH --the peacekeeping
mission that caused the cholera
epidemic—pulls out in October.
'The UN’s apology and promises
were promising in December,'
said Mario Joseph, Managing
Attorney of the Bureau des
Avocats Internationaux (BAI)
that has led the fight for
justice for cholera victims.
'But seven months later, with
only a pittance raised for the
so-called "New Approach" and not
a single promised consultation
with the cholera victims, they
look like empty public relations
gestures. It is time for the UN
to deliver.' The 15-member
Security Council is in Haiti
from June 22-24 to finalize the
transition from MINUSTAH to a
new mission focused on
supporting justice that will be
known as MINUJUSTH. The BAI
announced two protests during
the visit: one at the UN
logistics base in Haiti on
Thursday at 11 am, and a second
one in Champs de Mars on Friday
at 11." We'll have more on this:
Inner City Press will be
accompanying and covering, in as
much detail as possible, the UN
Security Council's visit to
Haiti from June 22 to 24. Watch
this site.
Footnote: on behalf
of the Free
UN Coalition for Access,
to which Guterres' spokesman
Stephane Dujarric does NOT "lend"
the briefing room and which has
never and will never ask for a
journalist to be thrown
out or restricted, Inner
City Press urged Guterres to
more routinely take questions,
for example on his way in and
out of the Security Council.
We'll see.
***
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