I found this interesting article about the street kids in Haiti in The Christian Science Monitor:

CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI - They are derisively called "sangine," which in Creole means "one without soul." Sleeping in alleys and living in the shadows, the street children of Haiti spend their days skipping school, hustling to get enough food to survive, often running afoul of the law, and getting high on paint thinner to try to forget their lot. Their communities and families, if they have them, are too poor to help.

The children are among the most visible signs of Haiti's poverty, even more apparent than... more

News article from The Boston Globe, continued from Part Two...

Cheryl Little, a lawyer and executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said that deportees are often mislabeled when they arrive in Haiti because authorities often look at their arrest records, which show charges but not convictions.

Many Haitians see the deportees as Americans, with their Haitian citizenship a mere technicality. By some estimates, the average deportee left... more

News Article from The Boston Globe, continued from Part One:

So why resume -- and quadruple -- the deportations? The US ambassador to Haiti, Janet Sanderson, told the Globe in December that there was a backlog of 450 Haitians in US jails who had served their time and could not be released onto American soil. She asserted that Haiti was a more stable place than it was a year ago.

The United States provided a $1 million grant for the International Organization... more

Here is an interesting article from The Boston Globe about the issue of Haitians convicted of crimes in America being deported back to Haiti:

By Amy Bracken, Globe Correspondent | March 11, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- As the Haitian government struggles to bring security to its chaotic capital, many Haitians say the United States is aggravating the crime problem by quadrupling the number of criminal deportees to their native country.

Tensions have risen after a recent wave of kidnappings and high-profile slayings in Port-au-Prince,... more

Continued from Part Two...

"Give me a chance, that way I'll be able to tell the truth," he sang. "I'm rapping for all the kids in prison. I'm rapping for the mothers that's trying to make something out of nothing."

Ricardo's rapping was drowned out by the wall-mounted television clicking on. Three boys climbed onto an upper bunk and leaned forward, entranced by the explosions and the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns in an action movie featuring Asian film star Chow Yun-Fat.

Pierre Sonson, a pensive 10-year-old who is not related to Little Baron, raved about Chow's clothes. He and... more

Continued from Part One...

But releases are few at Fort Dimanche, and a relentless stream of youngsters flows into the prison, the loud clang of metal gates signaling the beginning of an ordeal with no foreseeable end.

Little Baron's path to Fort Dimanche began on Port-au-Prince's airport road, where street children live amid the stench of rotting mountains of garbage. Like countless Haitian children, he was pushed into the streets by parents who couldn't afford to raise him, he says. By age 5, he was sleeping in the rusted carcasses of burned cars and picking through garbage heaps for... more

Here is an interesting and sad news article about boys living in a child prison in Port-au-Prince, Haiti from The Washington Post:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- In a small, walled courtyard ringed by coiled razor wire, a scrappy little boy punched and kicked at the humid air.

Mackenzy Sonson strutted one moment, cowered the next. Acted like a big man, then slipped into baby talk. "I'm not tough," he said on a recent afternoon. Then he smacked a kid twice his size.

Mackenzy, better known as "Little Baron," lives in Cell C-4, back wall, bottom bunk, at Fort... more

Continued from Part One...

Troops on tour?

The threat from the criminal gangs is the main reason why the United Nations force of 7,000 soldiers from many different countries is staying on in Haiti for another year.

They are the only ones with the weapons and the logistical backup to be able to take on the criminals and win. So far, though, their success has been strictly limited.

Recently one patrol was caught out when their armoured vehicle broke down in Cite Soleil - or Sun City - the ironically named vast, dark slum down near the capital's seafront.

The UN... more

Here is a fascinating article that I came across about the safety in Haiti:

Trying to stay safe in Haiti

As the United Nations decides to keep its peacekeepers in Haiti for another 12 months, Nick Caistor travels to the country to find out how dangerous the situation is for himself.

Whenever possible, I like to travel into Haiti by bus from the neighbouring Dominican Republic. It is a long seven-hour ride, but it allows me to take the political temperature at the border and to see if there is any improvement in the crippling poverty immediately obvious in the Haitian countryside before I am submerged in the sprawling mess of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

I... more

Here are a couple more news stories about the UN from Haiti over the weekend:

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Twenty-four hours of clashes between UN forces and armed gangs in the Haitian capital's sprawling slum of Cite Soleil have left at least five people dead and 12 wounded by gunfire, the UN mission in Haiti said.

"Four people, all likely gang members, were killed in clashes Wednesday at dawn between the blue helmets and gunmen," said a spokesman for the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Six people were... more