UN reportedly served with court papers over Haiti cholera outbreak

NEW YORK (CMC):

Lawyers for the Haitian plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the United Nations say Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has been served with papers ordering him to appear in court, but the UN is denying it.



The UN had been resisting lawsuits from Haiti cholera victims who claim that UN peacekeepers caused the 2010 epidemic that is still ravaging the French-speaking Caribbean country.



“This is a significant development in the fight to hold the United Nations responsible for the tragic events in Haiti,” said Stanley N. Alpert, one of the lawyers representing more than 1,500 Haitians, who have filed a suit against Ban and the United Nations in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, New York.

The suit is seeking compensation, which could theoretically run into the billions of dollars.



But Ban’s spokesman, Farhan Haq, denied that the secretary general saw the papers which an unidentified person had tried to give him as he was walking towards the Asia Society on Manhattan’s East Side on Friday morning to deliver a speech.



Haq said one of Ban’s security aides intervened and declined to accept them.



Cholera has killed more than 8,300 Haitians since it first appeared in the country.



Forensic studies, including one ordered by the United Nations, have identified the cholera bacteria as an Asian strain carried by Nepalese members of a United Nations peacekeeping force there, the New York Times reported.



United Nations officials have described the epidemic as an enormous tragedy and have set up a fund to help but have said the organization bears no legal responsibility for causing it.



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