I remember exactly where I was when the news broke out that some people in Haiti were dying of a strange disease. It was around this same time of the year, October 8, 2010, six years ago. I was on a bus going from Port au Prince to Cape Haitian; one of the passengers on the bus received the news on her cell phone that some people have died earlier after eating in a restaurant in St. Marc. It was in the beginning the belief that food poisoning was the culprit. It has been revealed later the poison was not in the food but in the water.

I have been a stringent critic through my column of the outcome of the stabilization process of the UN in Haiti. I have found that the UN/MINUSTAH is like an elephant in a small living room doing more harm than good to the host's furniture and that was before the cholera infestation brought into Haiti by the Nepalese unit of the MINUSTAH.

Imagine, the UN has been in Haiti monitoring the process of democratization for almost 30 years and, here we are, Haiti is at the bottom of the rankings in the wide world of nations.

Adding insult to injury, the UN is the culprit in causing the death of some 10,000 people while infecting 730,000 Haitians with the cholera virus.

The UN could have been an effective tool for the development of the country if at least a minimum of transfer of technology was provided to the nation. Transfer of technology such as the effective administration of the territorial collectivities: helping the mayors of the 142 towns of Haiti to collect the tax necessary to run their cities with solid educational institution, an adequate health system, a local police force extended into the rural hamlets, how to create wealth from the existing natural resources combines with the resilient Haitian human ethos.

Instead we observe an international institution skilled in faking caring and, to add insult to injury, inflicting a mortal disease into a febrile national public health infrastructure.

The guilty party, the Nepalese unit, has not even presented a symbolic apology to Haiti, a moral gesture for the harm to the nation. I have seen how a succession of prestigious international organizations including the eminent committee commissioned by the UN skewed the truth to place all the blame on Haiti instead of the shared responsibility of MINUSTAH.

"The Independent Panel concludes that the Haiti cholera outbreak was caused by the confluence of circumstances as described above, and was not the fault of, or deliberate action of, a group or individual. The following recommendations to the United Nations, to the government of Haiti, and to the international community are intended to help in preventing the future introduction and spread of cholera."

I have seen how, even at the last hour, after an opinion that reflected the judicial crafting http://aid.works/2016/08/cholera-haiti-report/ of a Justice John Marshall ("It is the province of the law to say what the law is") or a Justice Felix Frankfurter ("It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequal"), the UN rapporteur Philip Alston gave the last blow to the subterfuge.

His language could not be clearer: "The UN policy on cholera in Haiti is morally unconscionable, legally indefensible, and politically self defeating and entirely unnecessary." Yet the US District Court of Appeal for the Second Circuit under the advice of the Obama administration declared that the UN claim of absolute immunity is to be maintained.

Overruling the court's opinion, the UN secretary general found at last the venerable institution must come clean, it will accept moral responsibility for the harm done to the dead and the infected ones due to "the failure to ensure adequate waste management and to take adequate precaution to prevent spreading disease".

In the case of Haiti as in most underdeveloped countries, I have become a cynical person, not believing the best outcome will stem from the crocodile tears of some international organizations.

In my regular autumn visits to the United Nations bookstore, I usually take time to buy the latest report of the United Nations Peacekeeping Missions throughout the world. I have taken pains to find comforting news about three missions that have been effective or a success story worth reporting. Nay not three, but two, not two but one!

Haiti presents the best test case in the western hemisphere of what can be done to turn things around for the ten million citizens of the country who are resilient, ingenious and creative but are uneducated, unsophisticated and not ready to create wealth for themselves and for their nation.

It has also two million more in the Diaspora that send two billion dollars in money transfers effective only to sustain the national population through produce brought with that money from the Dominican Republic.

Haiti occupies the 163rd rank out of 188 nations in the development index, with 8.5 million people out of ten million living on less than three dollars per day. Poverty, disorganization and chaos are rampant in Haiti. We are witnessing these days a population in distress, seeking to leave the country by any means necessary; Suriname, Brazil, Mexico and the United States that is the preferred route for the uneducated as well those who are graduates of universities. They all want to escape chaotic Haiti.

Yet fixing Haiti's ills is reasonable easy. One must start at the beginning. I have often laid out the plan to build a successful nation.

a. Create and infuse the sentiment of solidarity and appurtenance within all the segments of the society.

b. It means building a consensus to lift up those who are left behind in the case of Haiti the rural areas as well as the ghetto populations.

c. Bring about decent institutions (school, education, health, economic incentive) as well as adequate infrastructure (road, electricity, water, communications, etc.) to all, even to the most remote areas of the country.

d. And find the divine mission of the nation while taking steps to realize it. In the case of Haiti it is its redemptory mission of spreading happiness throughout the world. Toussaint Louverture as as followed by Alain Carpentier in Haiti, el reigno de este mundo.

This should be the mission of the United Nations for all the nations on earth, including the venerable United States that is experiencing these days ethnic violence due to sporadic police brutality directed mainly to the black population.

Its mandate has been or will be renewed for another six months this September. It will be eternally renewed as long as Haiti and its citizens do not take steps to take care of their own business. I have seen with stupefaction how the governments have changed to either remain the same or worse than the previous one.

I am still expecting the Privert/Jean Charles government, albeit a temporary one, to give a lesson to the permanent governments how to behave like a real government! Detritus that used to be cleaned in the uppity areas of Port au Prince or in Cape Haitian are now left to rot as in the slums.

There is no comprehensive policy of enriching the population. The contemptuous exhibit of the state living like an Arabsheik is running unabated from government to government while the entire population does not know which saint to turn to and face the daily living obligations.

And now there is conspiracy between national government and international institutions to keep the Haitian people right where they are. Those who escape are returned right back to hell. Having combed planet earth like Herodotus, I am ready to attest that Haiti is closer to terrestrial paradise than any other place on earth, I have visited. The proof of the pudding is the expatriates who experience Haiti through its art, its food, its beaches, its laidback lifestyle, its vibrant history, its bon-enfant and resilient population including the MINUSTAH soldiers beg to return or to remain.

With so much hidden assets, Promise! Haiti will have a future with or without the United Nations! It only needs a learned leader who understands and applies the four principles of nation building mentioned above.

Jean H Charles LLB, MSW, JD is a regular contributor to the Caribbean News Now opinion pages.  He can be reached at jeanhcharles@aol.com and followed at Caribbean News Now/Haiti

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