Blue helmets in Haiti assist in new school year after devastating storms

United Nations peacekeepers are helping Haitian families face the new school year by distributing school kits and furniture and cleaning up buildings as the impoverished Caribbean country struggles with the effects of four successive storms in as many weeks.

At Solidarité Fraternité school in a poor quarter in Tabane commune, north of Port-au-Prince, the capital, Nepalese soldiers from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) have been handing out satchels, pens, colouring crayons and erasers, according to a report issued by the mission on Friday.

At Jean-Jacques Dessalines de Cabaret school, Jordanian peacekeepers handed out hot food, school bags and sports shirts to 200 youngsters. The week before, they distributed school material in Cazeau, near Cité Soleil, one of the city’s largest slums, and another distribution is planned shortly for Croix-des-Bouquets commune.

Across the country other UN blue helmets from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Sri Lanka and Uruguay have been cleaning up schools and delivering equipment.

MINUSTAH was set up in 2004 to help re-establish peace in Haiti after an insurgency forced then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to go into exile.