Poverty of Haiti's Cite Soleil gives Harper firsthand look at country' desperation

from Canada com

Richard Foot
CanWest News Service

PORT-AU-PRINCE -- Prime Minister Stephen Harper made history in Haiti on Friday, becoming the first foreign leader to enter into the sprawl of human misery that is Cite Soleil -- the notorious, crime-ridden slum on the west side of this desperate capital.

It was also Harper's first personal brush with such wretched poverty. And although his journey into the slum was brief -- he went there to visit a Canadian-funded hospital -- it was a vivid, firsthand lesson in Haiti's harsh realities.

"You go into a neighbourhood like Cite Soleil, where there has been considerable improvement in security and life, and yet you see how difficult that life is obviously for most people," Harper told reporters later, after a meeting with Haitian President Rene Preval.

"I think all of us, as fellow human beings, as people who have our own families, can only begin to understand the true difficulties and the challenges that so many people in this country face on a day-to-day basis."

Haiti, the poorest and most lawless nation in the Western Hemisphere -- and the birthplace of Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean -- was Harper's fourth and final stop on his week-long tour of Latin America.

As the second largest recipient of Canadian foreign aid after Afghanistan, Haiti is evidence of the obstacles in this region to Harper's new vision of a hemisphere bound together by prosperity and security.

His trip into Cite Soleil was made under tight security. Armed Brazilian soldiers from the United Nations stabilization mission were on every street corner as his motorcade made its way through neighbourhoods filled with ramshackle homes and storefronts pock-marked by bullet holes from years of gang violence and civil war.

Residents stared at the passing Canadian vehicles with moody detachment. Few smiled or waved. When CanWest News asked one woman her opinion of Canada - and whether the world was doing enough for her country - she made a simple plea.

"I am hungry, and I need money," she said.

At Sainte Catherine Laboure Hospital, a medical clinic funded in part by Canada and the United States, Harper spoke with doctors and nurses, watched the vaccination of young children, and met two little girls whose mothers are HIV-positive.

As Canadian police patrolled the rooftops of the clinic, Harper stood in the courtyard, sweating in the overpowering Haitian heat, and presented a blood-analysis machine to the hospital.

Canada, which had contributed a total of 550 soldiers to United Nations forces in Haiti over the past decade, now has 100 military and police personnel working with the current UN stabilization mission, known by its French acronym MINUSTAH.

Last year, Canada also pledged $520 million in development support to Haiti over a number of years, and is currently involved in a range of aid efforts, from the building of schools to the training of local civil servants, judges, prison workers and journalists.

After his private meeting with Harper, Preval said Haiti was a country "in convalescence," and that Harper was like a "doctor" coming to check up on a patient.

"It is still weak, very weak," Preval said, speaking in French, "and we have to be careful to protect it from relapse."

Harper said Canadians "should be very proud that they are offering to help. Their help is making a difference in terms of the safety of people's lives, in terms of giving them some hope and some opportunity.

"We all want to see that people enjoy some of the things we're able to enjoy in our country," he said.

Just how effective Canadian and other aid dollars are in helping Haiti rise above its misery is open to debate.

Commander Daniel Allard, a Montreal police officer working here with the UN mission, told CanWest News that if Harper had come last year, Cite Soleil - beset by violent gangs and drug traffickers - would not have been safe enough to visit.

"In the eight months I've been here, things have definitely improved," Allard said.

Other observers say that while political security has improved and inflation has been brought under control, crime, drug trafficking and human smuggling have reached epidemic levels - despite two years of international intervention following the election of the Preval government.

A recent report in the Miami Herald said record numbers of Haitians have been boarding rickety boats this summer and risking their lives at sea in a bid to reach other Caribbean islands, or even Florida.

Prosperity and stability have eluded Haiti ever since a slave revolt overthrew French colonial rule here in 1804.

Three-quarters of the country's 8.5 million people now live on less than $2 US a day, many scratching out a subsistence living in shantytowns like Cite Soleil.

Modern efforts to reform the country began in 1986, at the end of the dictatorial Duvalier era, but although a democratic constitution was adopted in 1987, Haiti remained in political turmoil, with former president Jean Bertrand Aristide twice being elected and ousted by coups and rebellions, the most recent of which, in 2004, was sponsored in part by the United States.

The world's hopes for Haiti now rest on Preval, a moderate who holds power thanks to a shaky coalition of political parties.

A stone's throw from the presidential palace grounds where Harper met Preval on Friday, a graffiti-stained concrete wall shows proof of Preval's tenuous hold on power, and his reliance on the UN forces that prop up his government.

"Vive Retou Aristide!" says the graffiti. "Hail the return of Aristide!"