Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti
| Founded | February 2004 |
|---|---|
| Location |
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| Website | www |
The Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) is a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA that seeks to accompany the people of Haiti in their non-violent struggle for the consolidation of constitutional democracy, justice and human rights. IJDH distributes information on human rights conditions in Haiti, pursues legal cases in Haitian, U.S. and international courts, and promotes grassroots advocacy initiatives with organizations in Haiti and abroad. IJDH was founded in the wake of the February 2004 coup d’etat that overthrew Haiti’s elected, constitutional government. The institute works closely with its Haitian affiliate, the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI).
IJDH, in affiliation with Bureau des Avocats Internationaux, represents victims of the 2010 Cholera Epidemic. Together they seek justice for over 8,600 Haitians killed and 684,000 infected and counting since the Cholera outbreak. The Cholera epidemic originated shortly after the arrival of UN Peacekeepers from Nepal, where cholera is endemic. The country had not reported an instance of cholera in over a century prior to the arrival of UN Peacekeepers, and IJDH and the BAI allege that the haphazard and inadequate sewage piping at the UN base caused the initial spread of the disease.
In November 2011, IJDH and BAI filed 5,000 claims to the U.N demanding accountability for the cholera epidemic. The case calls for the UN to implement a national water and sanitation system, fully compensate the victims of the epidemic, and issue a public apology. Various responses were both supportive and critical of this endeavor. Victoria Fan, in a joint post with Richard Cash from the Harvard School of Public Health, suggests that the lawsuit focused on the wrong culprit. Rather than addressing the problems of the environment and seeing this as a global failure to Haitians, the lawsuit is just playing a form of the “blame game”.
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