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
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
"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 (
“ 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...
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