Five years ago this month, the first cases of cholera in more than a century started to multiply in Haiti’s Artibonite Valley. Today, some 9,000 Haitians have died and 746,000 have been sickened by what mushroomed into the world’s worst cholera epidemic.

United Nations troops from Nepal brought the disease into Haiti, several scientific studies have definitively established. Sewage from their outhouses leaked into the headwaters of the Artibonite, Haiti’s largest river, which is used for irrigation, bathing, and drinking water.

Nonetheless, the UN continues to reject any responsibility for its negligence in unleashing cholera in Haiti, despite two on-going lawsuits against it.

The Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH) was the first to bring suit within the UN’s own grievance structure back in November 2011. This went nowhere, and the IJDH had to pursue its lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York. In January, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken ruled that the UN had immunity from prosecution. The IJDH has appealed that decision.

To mark the outbreak’s grim anniversary, on Wed., Oct. 14, cholera justice activists will erect large portraits of cholera victims outside UN headquarters in New York, Geneva, and Port-au-Prince. The action also comes on the eve of the renewal for a 12^th year of the country’s highly unpopular and illegal international military occupation known as the “UN Mission to Stabilize Haiti” (MINUSTAH), first deployed on Jun. 1, 2004. A common sign seen at demonstrations in Haiti is: “MINUSTAH = Cholera.”

The portraits will mutely but powerfully accuse the UN of impunity and are a part of a new campaign, Face Justice, which calls on the UN to hear victims’ calls for justice. The campaign demands that the UN accept responsibility for causing the epidemic through faulty waste management, provide reparations, and invest in water and sanitation to eliminate cholera.

“Every family in my community lost something because UN peacekeepers gave us cholera,” said Joseph Dade Guiwil, a cholera survivor whose portrait will be featured at the UN. “I say to the UN: give us justice.”

The exhibition of giant photographic portraits is done in partnership with the Inside Out Project, pioneered by French photographer/artist JR. Having won a $100,000 TED Prize in 2010, JR launched the Inside Out project as “a global participatory art project with the potential to change the world,” according to the project’s website. Inside Out has displayed huge head shot posters on buildings, in fields, and in plazas in dozens of countries around the globe to advance causes as diverse as Black Lives Matter, saving the Arctic, clean air in Belgium, and education improvement in Tanzania.

The “Face Justice” photo exhibits to debut on Oct. 14 will feature the diverse faces of Haiti’s cholera victims, including Pierre Louis Fedline, 9, who was orphaned by cholera, and Renette Viergélan, who was hospitalized with cholera when her 10-month old baby contracted it and died.

“We are doing this to remind the UN that victims of cholera are not just numbers – they are real people,” said Jimy Mertune, an activist with the Haitian diaspora group Collective of Solidarity for Cholera Victims. “They could be my uncle, my father, my sister, my brother. My children.”

Despite Judge Oetken’s ruling, support for cholera justice continues to grow. On Oct. 13, Amnesty International issued a strongly worded statement condemning the UN’s stance.

“The UN must not just wash its hands of the human suffering and pain that it has caused,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International. “Setting up general health programs and sanitation campaigns is important but not enough. What is needed now is a proper investigation into the full extent of the damages caused, and a detailed plan to help those who have fallen victim to this disease and the relatives of those who have died. Failing to take action will only undermine the UN’s credibility and responsibility as a promoter of human rights across the world.”

In July, 154 Haitian diaspora community organizations along with political, religious, media, union, and other diaspora leaders issued an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon “ to express our deep outrage at the United Nations’ failure to take responsibility for the cholera epidemic it brought to Haiti.” Calling the UN’s half-hearted focus on improving sanitation “disingenuous,” the Haitian diaspora leaders slammed the UN’s “refusal to comply with its legal obligations to Haiti’s cholera victims [which] denies it the credibility necessary to effectively promote the rule of law in Haiti. It also sets a dangerous example about the ability of the powerful to avoid justice, which will come back to haunt Haitians.”

Even four high-level UN officials sent an official Allegation Letter in September 2014 to the Secretary General Ban to “express serious concern” that the UN “failed to take reasonable precautions and act with due diligence to prevent the introduction and the outbreak of cholera in Haiti since 2010,” that those “affected by the cholera outbreak have  been denied access to legal remedies and have not received compensation,” and that “efforts to combat cholera and to improve the water and sanitation facilities in Haiti have been inadequate.”

Meanwhile, on the legal front, the IJDH’s appeal of the January dismissal has “a wide number of supporters, including former UN officers, who have submitted amicus curiae [friend of the court] briefs in support of the plaintiffs,” IJDH lawyer Beatrice Lindstrom told Haïti Liberté. “The U.S. government has continued to ask the court for dismissal based on UN immunity, and we just submitted our last brief at the end of September. We're now waiting to hear if there will be oral argument.”

In Haiti, several thousand people are expected to gather for a demonstration outside the UN Logistics Base at the Port-au-Prince airport on Oct. 15. Face Justice is also sending to UN member states post cards with cholera victims’ photos and appeals for justice.

“We hope these personal images and stories will cause more people at the UN to consider the human toll of cholera and to understand that the UN’s inadequate response ignores the dignity of each victim and the severity of their loss,” said Katharine Oswald, Policy Analyst and Advocacy Coordinator for the Mennonite Central Committee in Haiti, who worked with victims to document their stories.