MOSCOW, October 9 (RAPSI) – Lawyers representing the interests of the victims of Haiti’s historic 2010 cholera outbreak vowed Wednesday to take the UN to court in New York in an effort to secure compensation for the thousands of lives lost and hundreds of thousands of illnesses endured as a result of the outbreak, Reuters reported Wednesday.

According to the World Health Organization, (WHO) a cholera outbreak occurred in Haiti in 2010. On October 26, the WHO issued a statement explaining that Haiti’s Ministry of Health had reported 3,342 confirmed cases of cholera, of which 259 had been fatal at that point. Approximately one month later, another WHO statement announced that the Ministry had reported 60,240 cholera cases, of which 1,415 had been fatal. A UN report dated February 7, 2013 and authored by independent expert on the situation of human rights in Haiti Michel Forst featured a dramatically increased set of updated statistics: “At the time of writing, cholera had claimed some 8,000 victims and around 670,000 persons had been affected by the disease.”

According to a November 2011 petition for relief, initially filed with the UN by lawyers working with human rights advocacy groups Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, (IJDH), “The cholera outbreak is directly attributable to the negligence, gross negligence, recklessness and deliberate indifference for the health and lives of Haiti’s citizens by the United Nations (“UN”) and its subsidiary, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (“MINUSTAH”).”

A backgrounder on IJDH’s website claims that cholera took Haiti by storm in 2010 shortly after the arrival of a battalion of Nepalese peacekeepers. According to the backgrounder, cholera is endemic to Nepal.

The IJDH goes on to assert in the backgrounder that the legal underpinnings of its case against the UN arise from the organization’s failure to screen troops for cholera prior to deployment from a country where cholera is endemic; its failure to adequately maintain its sanitation and waste disposal facilities, thus enabling contaminated waste to enter a critical water source; and failure to take immediate action to address the cholera outbreak.

According to the backgrounder, “[i]n legal terms, these failures constitute negligence, gross negligence, recklessness, and deliberate indifference for the lives of Haitian people.”

Attorneys from the IJDH, BAI, and the law firm Kurzban Kurzban Weinger Tetzeli & Pratt PA filed the November 2011 petition for relief with the offices of MINUSTAH and the Office of the UN Secretary General. The petition in part sought compensation from the UN for each of the outbreaks victims, and for the families of those whose lives were claimed. Specifically, the petition sought a minimum of $100,000 for each life lost to cholera, and $50,000 for each individual that suffered illness or injury as a result of the disease.

The IJDH backgrounder noted that the petitioners would file a civil case in a judicial court if the UN were to fail to respond.

Reuters reported Wednesday that IJDH had issued a statement confirming that plaintiffs in the lawsuit included Haitians and Haitian Americans that had been victimized by the cholera outbreak, and that it ouwld be filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.