College student Treston Wheat says that the United Nations should pay for mistakes made during the response following the earthquake in Haiti.

The United Nations has failed again as an international institution, and it should pay for causing an epidemic of almost biblical proportions in Haiti. Not many people are aware of the significant epidemiological trouble facing Haiti: since October 2010, the small Caribbean nation has battled cholera, and the disease is laying waste to the country. The most insidious issue, however, is that the UN caused the problem through gross negligence. Cholera, scientific name vibrio cholera, is a nasty disease that spreads through contaminated water supplies from feces. It causes horrific watery diarrhea, which leads to more contamination and spreads the disease faster.

Haiti saw a rapid increase of cholera patients in October 2010 beginning in Meille, which has a UN camp nearby. Their base at the Meille Tributary held dreadful sanitation conditions: the septic system was overflowing with fecal matter. Jonathan Katz, describing the base, wrote that “The back of the base smelled like a toilet had exploded. Reeking, dark liquid flowed out of a broken pipe, toward the river, from next to what the soldiers said were latrines.” The tributary ran into the Artibonite River that horizontally cuts through the middle of Haiti, tainting the water supply for hundreds of thousands of people.

Now, 700,000 Haitians are infected and 8,500 have died. Hospitals did not have adequate amount of rehydration salts or “cholera cots,” beds with holes in the middle of them to dispose of the diarrhea.

Genetic testing by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention has matched the strain of cholera in Haiti to the strain from Nepal. Nepal saw an outbreak the summer before the UN deployed peace keepers from there to the island country, and the UN did not test its soldiers before redeployment.

Even though the UN has obstinately refused to accept responsibility, that does not mean Haitians are not fighting back. A joint effort by the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) and the Bueau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) have utilized legal means to receive compensation. ….

Recovering compensation for Haiti and securing a public apology by the UN should be a paramount issue for the US government. This is moral and political failure by the UN further demonstrates its inefficient, unproductive, and ineffective nature. As an organization, the UN has rarely achieved any substantial results and has become increasingly hypocritical on human rights issues. Here is a chance for the US to shows its commitment to justice and for the UN to receive absolution of its sins.