Inside Story Americas - Haiti: Victimising the victims?

The United Nations is refusing to pay compensation to the families of victims of the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak that was blamed on its peacekeepers. The outbreak brought devastation to a population already struggling to recover from the earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people earlier that year. Now in a bureaucratically worded statement, the UN says it will not pay the compensation claims, which amount to hundreds of millions of dollars. The world body cited a 1946 convention as the basis for its legal immunity, and said it is not bound to pay the claims. To discuss the trials still plaguing Haiti, Inside Story Americas with presenter Shihab Rattansi is joined by guests: Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer and director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, the organisation that brought the claims of the cholera victims' families to the UN; Laurent Dubois, a professor of history at Duke University and author of Haiti: The Aftershocks of History; and Jean Yves Point Du Jour, the host of weekly Haitian radio show Konbit Lakay. The United Nations declined to take part in this discussion.