Skip to main content

Haiti: UN mission helps refurbish high school for 5,000 students [PAP06/138]

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) has helped rehabilitate a high school for some 5,000 students in the St. Martin quarter of Port-au-Prince, the capital, after it had been out of commission since 2004 because of insecurity and disrepair.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Representative Edmond Mulet took part in the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Lycée Daniel Fignolé, stressing that strengthening state institutions, including education facilities, is a crucial part of the mandate of the mission, set up in 2004 to help re-establish peace in the impoverished Caribbean country after an insurgency forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile. The 16-classroom school was refurbished with UN, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) funding. Prior to its refurbishment, the public school didn't have the necessary equipment for students to attend classes in a normal fashion.

"The younger students didn't have any chairs to sit on, it was in total disarray," according to a student named Dunia now in his last year. "After the events of 2004, I was tossed around from school to school," said one student, Fèdre Lacroix. "Now I'm happy to be back again in my old building."

Gertrude Benoit, one of the parents, expressed her satisfaction, saying, "While the school was closed, the students were in a disadvantaged situation. As a parent, I am so happy to see the students back in their classrooms."

The restoration include remodeling 16 classrooms, and the addition of doors and window. MINUSTAH financed the building of 250 school benches which cost 975,000 Haitian gourdes, approximately $25,000 (US).

In related developments, UN peacekeepers continued their crackdown on armed gangs in Port-au-Prince, arresting five more presumed members of the Evans criminal gang. Scores of suspects have been captured in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood, one of the violence-ridden country's most dangerous areas, in the past two months.

Meanwhile, Principal Deputy Special Representative Luiz Carlos da Costa has completed a tour of judicial infrastructures and meetings with judges and lawyers in the northern city of Cap-Haitien as part of a UN initiative to help revive and strengthen the Haitian judicial sector.

(Sources: MINUSTAH Public Information Office; MINUSTAH QIPs Database)

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Widespread Hunger Spurs Riots in Haiti

Violence has again recently struck Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. It started last Friday in Les Cayes, one of the country's more touristic spots and since yesterday in Port-au-Prince. Today, the streets of Les Cayes and Port-au-Prince have been littered with burned tyres and other barricades. Vehicles parked on the road side have been smashed. Petrol stations along the main streets have been ransacked and vandalised. The people have been clamouring against "la vie chère"or the very high cost of living. Eighty percent of the 8.7 million Haitians live in poverty and 54 percent live in abject poverty, according to the CIA's World Factbook. Certain analysts have suggested that the demonstrations resulted mainly from the lack of response from the government concerning this widespread problem. This stance has been taken by the country's business community. The Haiti Chamber of Commerce has reiterated today that it was unfortunate that the governme...
1 comment
Read more

How Aid in Cash, Not Goods, Averted A Famine In Somalia

“ Increasingly, it became clear that a new flow of international aid, cash, and not goods, worked to mitigate the risks of an immediate famine. For now, in spite of acute risks in some parts of the country, Somalia has successfully averted a food crisis,” How Aid in Cash, Not Goods, Averted A Famine In Somalia 08 September - Source: IPS News - 594 Words In February, when the government of Somalia sounded an alarm to the UN about risks of a famine in the country, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), besides quickly shuffling a response team, was acting from a steep sense of history. The Office, instead of sending out massive aid packages, distributed cash vouchers to families who could spend it to buy goods according to their needs. The famine between the years 2010 and 2012, which killed more than a quarter of a million people in the country, offered important lessons to the aid community. This spring, when poor rainfall led to large scale crop failure...
Post a Comment
Read more