Minustah

La Tercera, Monday, January 20, 2020

Dear Director:

Some Chilean media outlets have interpreted that there were 21 pregnancies related to Chilean troops that were in Haiti, out of a total of 265 reported by Lee and Bartels in their report and subsequent interview in ‘The Conversation.’

What they have clarified to me subsequently is that there are 265 stories that have been collected, and 21 would be related to Chileans, which could very well be the same stories or duplicated stories, since the method used consisted of interviewing members of the local communities, with a significant detail that 70% of the interviews were conducted with men and very few, if any, with the women who would have become pregnant.

The research method used by Lee and Bartels should indicate that it is very possible there are cases related to Chile, but it does not allow for exact figures, rather directional ones. If we, as the State of Chile, want to determine what happened, I suspect it will need to be done on the ground with people who have experience in Haiti, along with the assistance we can receive from United Nations experts. Conducting an investigation from Santiago will be of little to no help in this case.

Richard Kouyoumdjian Inglis
Vice President of AthenaLab