The Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Haiti, Helen La Lime, today (17 Oct) told the Security Council that as cholera cases “tear through parts of Port-au-Prince,” and armed gangs continue to blockade the Varreux fuel terminal, “the consequences for Haiti’s basic infrastructure have been severe.”
The lack of fuel, La Lime said, has disrupted operations at the country’s hospitals and water suppliers, impacting the cholera response.
Without fuel, she said, “waste is not removed from neighbourhoods, while torrential rains promote flooding, which mixes with refuse to create insalubrious conditions ripe for the spread of disease.”
Without free movement of fuel, the UN official said, “Haiti will be unable to get ahead of this current crisis.”
Against this backdrop of insecurity and humanitarian crisis, La Lime noted, “on 7 October the Council of Ministers authorized the Prime Minister to request the support of a specialized international armed force, to help secure the free movement of water, fuel, and medical supplies to avert the situation deteriorating further.”
She reiterated Secretary-General António Guterres’s call on Haiti’s partners “to consider this request as a matter of urgency for the immediate relief of those already most vulnerable.”
United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfieldthold the Council that the US and Mexico will bring two draft resolutions to the Council, one imposing financial sanctions on criminal actors and a second resolution that would authorize a non-UN international security assistance mission.
This resolution, she said, “will propose a limited, carefully scoped, non-UN mission led by a partner country with the deep, necessary experience required for such an effort to be effective,” and added that the United States “will consider the most effective means to directly support, enable, and resource it.”
Haiti’s Foreign Minister, Jean Victor Geneus, for his part told the Council that “Haiti today is dealing with major security, political, economic and social challenges” and “the humanitarian crisis and the resurgence of cholera aggravate the situation further.”
He echoed the Secretary General’s call for “the international community including members of the Council to urgently consider the request from the government so as to help us face the crisis”
