The UN on Thursday reiterated its support for eradicating cholera in Haiti, an epidemic it accidentally started, although the Haitian government said residents would be better served if aid funding was channelled through it.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday appointed a new special envoy for Haiti tasked with leading fundraising efforts for the plan to beat cholera, introduced to the country in 2010 when UN peacekeepers dumped infected sewage into a river.
“We acknowledge that there’s a problem and we are here to reiterate the commitment of the United Nations and the international community to work together to fight this problem and to work to solve it,” Bolivian Ambassador to the UN Sacha Sergio Llorentty Soliz told journalists at the Haitian National Palace.
Llorentty is also president of the UN Security Council for this month.
The UN Security Council and the Haitian government had discussed plans for better management of aid in a closed-door meeting, Haitian Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs Aviol Fleurant said.
“A large part of aid travels through NGOs [non-governmental organizations] ... which could be used to efficiently and sustainably finance the implementation of public policy through governmental channels,” he said.
The UN Security Council in April voted unanimously to end its 13-year-long peacekeeping mission in Haiti and replace it with a smaller mission, which would be drawn down after two years as the country boosts its own force.
The peacekeeping mission, one of the longest-running in the world and known as MINUSTAH, has been dogged by controversies, including the introduction of cholera to the island, and sexual abuse claims.
As members of the US Security Council touched down in Haiti on Thursday, about 200 people assembled outside the UN base with posters and signs calling for reparations to individual cholera victims and demanding an end to MINUSTAH and the follow-up mission.
“If MINUSTAH hadn’t brought cholera here, I wouldn’t have had cholera,” said Renette Charedy, a 36-year-old standing at the fringes of the protest.
The UN does not accept legal responsibility for the outbreak. About 9,300 people have died and more than 800,000 sickened due to cholera and the Haitian government believes the UN still has work to do on it.
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