Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

A Dirty Occupation: The UN’s Criminal Enterprise and Ecological Catastrophe in Haiti
Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Columnist
17 Nov 2021
A Dirty Occupation: The UN’s Criminal Enterprise and Ecological Catastrophe in Haiti
UN tanker truck offloading the raw sewage of MINUSTAH Peacekeepers at Morne Cabrit sewage treatment plant in January 2013. Photo: Isabeau Doucet

What are the environmental and ecological impacts of large-scale military occupations by the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions? The deadly cholera epidemic unleashed on the Haitian people by UN soldiers is an extension of a totality of violence - material, political, and ecological – enacted by a presumably humanitarian peacekeeping mission.

When we consider the current ecological threat to the earth and its inhabitants, we cannot forget the outsized place of war and empire in exacerbating climate change and enabling environmental catastrophe. The ongoing United Nations occupation of Haiti provides an example. As does the introduction of a cholera epidemic by UN soldiers. Cholera is an extension of the totality of violence - material, political, and ecological – enacted by a presumably humanitarian peacekeeping mission.

Do people ever wonder how a tiny island nation such as Haiti handles the environmental consequences of a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar foreign military occupation which, at any given time, had between 6000 and 12,000 military troops and police stationed in Haiti alongside thousands of civilian personnel? We know, for instance, that the U.S. military – with its vast global infrastructure of cargo planes, container ships, trucks, and drones to supply its operations in 800 military bases, as well as its arsenal of weapons and ammunition – is the largest polluter on the planet. What are the environmental and ecological impacts of a large-scale military occupation by the United Nations?

A report from 2008 calculated that UN military occupations are responsible for more than half of the organization’s climate footprint. Another study reveals that a mission of 15,000 occupying troops produces “about 11,000 tons of solid waste a year, not including the waste resulting from the use of ammunition, the development and changing state of the land used by the UN bases, water use, and emissions.” That same report tells us that “the average Malian generates 237.3 kilograms of waste per year, while a UN peacekeeper produces 677 kilograms a year.” Imagine how many tons of “occupation waste” that Haiti has had to absorb during the two decades of a racist foreign military occupation.

Ecological ruination is built into the infrastructure of occupation. In Haiti, the United Nations completely disfigured the built environment. While the large multi-acre MINUSTAH headquarters was in Port-au-Prince, near the Toussaint Louverture International Airport for access to airfields and airspace, there were permanent and semi-permanent encampments built all over the country--UN constructed bases, camps, and outposts. Painted in bold blue and guarded by armed soldiers, these encampments, large and small, become prominent markers on the landscape. The building of encampments also meant the appropriation of land and other resources from predominantly poor villagers throughout the country. Indeed, one of the common names for MINUSTAH occupation soldiers was “vòlè kabrit,” goat thieves.

In the fall of 2010, the United Nations “peacekeeping” mission, MINUSTAH, brought cholera to Haiti. When the epidemic was first discovered, those in the global north quickly pulled from the ready arsenal of racist justifications, linking the origins of the disease to Haiti’s poverty and presumably unsanitary behavior. But this was quickly rebuffed by local communities who led reporters to the exact source of the epidemic – the MINUSTAH Méyè base located a few meters from a stream flowing from the Artibonite river, the main water source for the many villages around the area. Apparently, the UN base regularly used the river as a dumping site for their soldiers’ fecal waste. This was in addition to literal shit-holes -- large pools of feces -- left in fields nearby. The UN can desecrate Haitian villagers’ land and water this way because its officials and underlings have a blatant disregard for poor Black Haitian people as human beings. Because, surely, the killing of 30,000 white Canadians or Australians would generate more outrage.

But these soldiers are also equated with the filth and violence of cholera, a disease that takes away one’s dignity. “Minista, kolera!” signs swept the cities and the countryside of Haiti at the height of the epidemic, a bold effort to force these armed foreign occupiers to take ownership of a degrading disease that, along with their feces, they believed that Black people deserved.

Cholera victims – victims of the UN’s occupation waste – suffered multifold indignities. The so-called peacekeeping operations of the UN are dirty occupations, ecological and environmental disasters for the victim-nations. It is not an accident that most humanitarian “peacekeeping” occupations these days occur primarily in nonwhite countries, and especially in Black countries – on the African continent and in Haiti. And in the end, the United Nations claimed immunity and refused to compensate the hundreds of thousands impacted by their dirty disease.

It took three years to bring cholera under control, and by then the disease had killed 30,000 to 50,000 people and destroyed millions of lives. Haitian cholera victims may be the forgotten casualties of the ecological catastrophe of a foreign military occupation under the guise of humanitarianism. But all of Haiti’s ecology – its rivers, lakes, farmland, its air quality – is an environmental and imperialist crime scene. 

Jemima Pierre is a BAR editor and contributor, the coordinator for the Haiti/Americas Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace, and a Black Studies and anthropology professor at UCLA.

Haiti
Haiti Occupation
Haiti UN Occupation
environmental racism

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

The Black Alliance for Peace Welcomes Delayed Security Council Vote on Western Invasion of Haiti
Black Alliance For Peace
The Black Alliance for Peace Welcomes Delayed Security Council Vote on Western Invasion of Haiti
26 October 2022
The Black Alliance for Peace amplifies the demand of the Haitian people. UN representatives of the Peoples Republic of China and the Russian Fe
COMMENTARY: The Audacity of Hopelessness, John Maxwell, 2009
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
COMMENTARY: The Audacity of Hopelessness, John Maxwell, 2009
28 September 2022
The late Jamaican journalist John Maxwell on imperialism, underdevelopment, and the foreign love affair with Haiti’s misery.
At Least One Person Dead After a New Day of Anti-Government Protests in Haiti
Peoples Dispatch
At Least One Person Dead After a New Day of Anti-Government Protests in Haiti
07 September 2022
Haitians have been mobilizing against the Ariel Henry administration’s inability to combat crime, inflation and poverty.
 BAR Book Forum: Crystal Eddins’ Book, “Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Crystal Eddins’ Book, “Rituals, Runaways, and the Haitian Revolution”
20 July 2022
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
An Open Letter to His Excellency, Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), President of Mexico, on the Renewal of the UN Occupation of Haiti
Black Alliance for Peace
An Open Letter to His Excellency, Mr. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), President of Mexico, on the Renewal of the UN Occupation of Haiti
13 July 2022
The United Nations occupation of Haiti under MINUSTAH and BINUH brought instability, violence, and even cholera to that nation.
Haiti: The Ransom is Still Being Paid
Robert Roth
Haiti: The Ransom is Still Being Paid
06 July 2022
The acknowledgement that France and the U.S. robbed Haiti of billions of dollars is long overdue.
Haiti| UN: twenty organizations say "No to the renewal of BINUH!
Rezo Nodwes
Haiti| UN: twenty organizations say "No to the renewal of BINUH!"
22 June 2022
The Security Council must say no to continuing interference in Haiti's affairs through the United Nations Integrated office in Haiti (BINUH).
Haiti and the Americas Syllabus
Haiti/Americas Committee Black Alliance For Peace
Haiti and the Americas Syllabus
08 June 2022
The Black Alliance for Peace Haiti-Americas Team Syllabus
Summit of the Americas or Summit of the United States of America?
Bertony Dupont
Summit of the Americas or Summit of the United States of America?
31 May 2022
The U.S. is using the upcoming Summit of the Americas to bully the rest of the region. The current puppet leader of Haiti must follow U.S.
Is the U.S. Covering Up its Role in Moïse’s Murder?
Kim Ives
Is the U.S. Covering Up its Role in Moïse’s Murder?
18 May 2022
The judge presiding over the trial of an accused killer of Haitian president Jovenel Moise granted the DOJ request to classify certain evidence

More Stories


  • Black Agenda Radio March 24, 2023
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio March 24, 2023
    24 Mar 2023
    In this segment, we learn why Atlanta is the site of the planned Cop City police training facility in what purports to be a Black mecca
  • Ray McGovern Connects Anniversary of Iraq Invasion and Ukraine Proxy War - Part 1
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Ray McGovern Connects Anniversary of Iraq Invasion and Ukraine Proxy War - Part 1
    24 Mar 2023
    Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush.
  • How Atlanta Politics Led to Cop City
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    How Atlanta Politics Led to Cop City
    24 Mar 2023
    Tea Troutman is a community organizer, urbanist, and cultural critic from Atlanta, Georgia. They are currently a Ph.D. student in Geography at the University of Minnesota working on a dissertation…
  • Biden Continues Punitive Immigration Policies - Part 1
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Biden Continues Punitive Immigration Policies - Part 1
    24 Mar 2023
    Aly Wane is on the advisory board of the Immigrant Justice Network. He joins us from Syracuse, New York to discuss Biden administration immigration policy and its similarities with that of Trump and…
  • Commemorations of the Attack on Iraq March 20th and Libya March 19th Reaffirm that the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination Remains the Greatest Threat to International Peace on our Planet
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Commemorations of the Attack on Iraq March 20th and Libya March 19th Reaffirm that the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination Remains the Greatest Threat to International Peace on our Planet
    22 Mar 2023
    Iraq and Libya were both targeted by the U.S. in the month of March. The anniversaries of these war crimes must be commemorated, and the nature of the US/EU/NATO war machine must be understood.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us