Raquel Pelissier Goodwill Ambassador for Haiti 

Raquel Pelissier Miss Haiti 2016 and the runner-up for Miss Universe 2017 was received by the Haitian government during her first visit back to the country since the Miss Universe pageant that was held in the Philippines. Raquel was received at the Toussaint Louverture International Airport in Port-au-Prince by a delegation of government officials, collaborators, students and other guests at the airport's Diplomatic Room.

After being welcomed by the Minister of Culture and Communication, Marc Aurèle Garcia and the Chancellery of Haiti S.E.M Pierrot Delienne, Raquel Pelissier, was received by the President of the Republic at the National Palace who presented her with the title of Goodwill Ambassador for Haiti. Source: Le Nouvelliste

3 young Haitian children are the winners of an international toy competition

The General Consulate of Haiti in Montreal is proud to announce that within the framework of the 21st Edition of the International Competition of Toys Made from Recycled Materials, organized by OXFAM Quebec in association with the Planetarium Rio Tinto Alcan in Montreal, three young Haitian children from the orphanage "One Way Children Home" of Kenscoff in Haiti, were in this competition and came out as prize-winners.

They are:

Stanley Saintilma (11 years);

Joseph Claudner (12 years)

Jean-Baptiste Marcelin (11 years).

It should be recalled that 7 countries: Benin, Bolivia, France, Jordan, Honduras, Peru, and Haiti, as well as 30 schools from Quebec, participated in this competition titled, "The universe, an infinite playground."

During the Official reception of the Prize-winners, which took place last week at the Planetarium Rio Tinto Alcan, the Consul General of Haiti in Montreal, Justin Viard, was present to receive the certificates for the 3 winners for Toy #25 called "Banm Kous" (The Race is Mine). 

“The Consulate of Haiti in Montreal welcomes warmly these distinctions which value the creativity, the artistic talents and the handiwork of our young people… The Consulate deeply congratulates the talented Prize-winners and invites young people from here and there to follow their tracks.

The toy exhibit, "The universe, an infinite playground!" Which displays hundreds of toys, will take place until May, 2017 at the Planetarium Rio Tinto Alcan, situated in 4801 Avenue Pierre De Coubertin, Montreal, Quebec H1V 3N4.

Haiti Deportations Response Network (HDRN)

Bureau des avocats internationaux

Hundreds of detained Haitian asylum-seekers and migrants, including women and children, are being deported weekly from detention centers across the United States in violation of their rights. They need your help urgently.

The Department of Homeland Security is currently holding about 4,000 detainees in facilities throughout the US. More than 2500 Haitian detainees have already been deported, and around 270 more are being deported each week. Lawyers, community activists and detainees’ relatives have reported a range of prejudicial procedural problems in their asylum processing, including no lawyers, weak or non-existent interpretation and the use of apparently fabricated statements. Most of the detainees are held in remote facilities far from family, community and legal support; and some would have viable asylum claims if they had effective representation. Find moredetails here.

Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti is creating the Haiti Deportations Response Network (HDRN)to address the detainees' legal needs and issues, fill in gaps where possible and coordinate advocacy for better policies and practices.Network membership is open to everyone, but we are particularly interested in hearing right now from:

a) Attorneys, accredited representatives, and law students who are interested in representing Haitians in deportation proceedings, especially but not only those willing to travel to remote facilities;

b) Attorneys, accredited representatives, and service providers near a detention facility who are in need of legal, interpretation, or other help and interpreters so they can assist the detained Haitians;

c) Attorneys and accredited representatives who are already providing representation and can share their experiences and evidence of potential abuses;

d) Interpreters fluent in Haitian Creole and English. Ability to travel to the facilities is preferred but not essential, as telephonic interpretation is often needed;

e) People interested in investigating the possibility of class-action litigation against the abuses;

f) People interested in a coordinating role, for example with interpreters and/or volunteer attorneys.

The HDRN will start as a Google Group list-serve. To join,pleasefill out this form. If any questions, please emailCette adresse e-mail est protégée contre les robots spammeurs. Vous devez activer le JavaScript pour la visualiser.. And please forward this to others in your network who might be interested!

Thank you,

Steve Forester,Immigration Policy Coordinator

Ira Kurzban,Board Chair

Brian Concannon,Executive Director

P.S.Lawyers seeking information to boost asylum claims should visit ourHaiti Asylum Information Project.

AP Exclusive: Malnutrition killing inmates in Haiti jails

By DAVID MCFADDEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Feb 20, 2017, 11:42 AM ET

Dozens of emaciated men with sunken cheeks and?protruding ribs lie silently in an infirmary at Haiti's largest prison, most too weak to stand. The corpse of an inmate who died miserably of malnutrition is shrouded beneath a plastic tarp.

Elsewhere, prisoners are crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in cellblocks so overcrowded they have to sleep in makeshift hammocks suspended from the ceiling or squeeze four to a bunk. New arrivals at Haiti's National Penitentiary jostle for space on filthy floors where inmates on lockdown 22 hours a day are forced to defecate into plastic bags in the absence of latrines.

"Straight up: This is hell. Getting locked up in Haiti will drive you crazy if it doesn't kill you first," said Vangeliste Bazile, a homicide suspect who is among the about 80 percent of those incarcerated who have not been convicted of a crime but are held in prolonged pretrial detention waiting for their chance to see a judge.

Overcrowding, malnutrition and infectious diseases that flourish in jammed quarters have led to a surge of inmate deaths, including 21 at the Port-au-Prince penitentiary just last month. Those who monitor the country's lockups are sounding an alarm about collapsing conditions.

"This is the worst rate of preventable deaths that I have encountered anywhere in the world," said Dr. John May, a Florida physician who co-founded the nonprofit group Health Through Walls to improve health conditions in the Caribbean and several African nations.

Prisoners at the crumbling Port-au-Prince penitentiary flocked around a team of Associated Press journalists on a recent morning, eager to discuss their cases and complain of being all but forgotten at the foul-smelling furnace. Some 40 percent of the country's 11,000 inmates are housed there in appalling squalor, a block away from government headquarters, and many are tormented by the prospect of indefinite detention.

"I'm really scared I won't get to see a judge until I'm an old man," said Paul Stenlove, a 21-year-old murder suspect who was put in the prison 11 months ago.

Prisons are crowded, dismal places in any number of countries. But Haiti's penal system is by far the globe's most congested, with a staggering 454 percent occupancy level, according to the most recent ranking by the University of London's Institute for Criminal Policy Research. The Philippines comes second with 316 percent occupancy.

Inmates, some waiting up to eight years to see a judge, try to keep their sanity by maintaining a daily routine of push-ups and lifting jugs filled with dirty water. Others play checkers or dominoes. Sentenced convicts and the far greater numbers of untried suspects pool together what little money they can scare up to buy small TVs and radios for their shared cells.

But with widespread malnutrition and rats scampering through cells made for 20 men but now crammed with 80 to 100 it's hard to focus on anything but basic survival.

"Only the strong can make it in here," said Ronel Michel, a prisoner in one of the crumbling cellblocks where exterior walls are stained with dried feces because the men have to drop their excrement out of barred windows.

Not all the inmates are weakened by hunger. Some are provided meals by visiting relatives and others are permitted by guards to meet with contacts to bring in food, cigarettes and other things. AP reporters saw one inmate with a wad of cash standing near the main gate ordering spaghetti and fried plantains from a vendor outside.

But the large majority of prisoners are dependent on authorities to feed them twice a day and get little more than rationed supplies of rice, oats or cornmeal. Even clean drinking water is often in short supply.

Prison authorities say they try their best to meet inmates' needs, but repeatedly receive insufficient funds from the state to buy food and cooking fuel, leading to deadly cases of malnutrition-related ailments such as beriberi and anemia.

"Whenever the money is late it's the prisoners who pay," said National Penitentiary Director Ysarac Synal.

Haiti's penal system is so overcrowded that suspects are held indefinitely in other fetid, cramped pens, including cells at four police stations, where malnutrition is common. Three inmates recently died of malnutrition ailments at a prison in the southern city of Les Cayes.

Life was supposed to be getting a little better for prisoners here. In 2008, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Haiti to bring its "inhuman" prisons in line with minimum international standards. After a devastating earthquake in 2010, donor nations and humanitarian organizations launched projects aimed at building new infrastructure and improving deplorable conditions.

One of these improvements was the "Titanic" cellblock at the National Penitentiary, built with $260,000 from the International Committee of the Red Cross. Its cement tower was intended to ease overcrowding. But a few years after opening, it is possibly the most crowded block in the prison.

"It's a permanent struggle just to keep them (Haitian prisoners) alive," said Thomas Ess, chief of delegation for Haiti's Red Cross office.

Severe overcrowding is partly due to rampant corruption, as judges, prosecutors and lawyers join in creating a market for bribes, said Brian Concannon, director of the nonprofit Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

"If nine in 10 prisoners is in pretrial detention, and a person has no prospect of getting a fair trial for years, his family will find some way of raising the funds to bribe him out, regardless of guilt," Concannon said.

Some foreign officials who have seen the system up close are exasperated by a lack of political will to solve problems of corruption, sluggish justice and prison conditions.

"It is unconscionable that despite hundreds of millions of dollars in international aid the situation is even worse today, with inmates suffering from severe malnutrition and dying of preventable diseases," U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who toured the National Penitentiary in 2012, said in an email.

As men continue to die unnecessarily at the National Penitentiary, Port-au-Prince chief prosecutor Danton Leger has been holding mass burials for prisoners, purchasing caskets and floral arrangements. Dead inmates, regardless of whether they were convicted or not, were previously dumped in a potter's field.

"The men in there are forced to live like animals. They can at least be buried like people," Leger told AP.

CHOLERA: There has been no compensation from the UN up until now

The United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres, asked the Member states to inform him before March 6th if they intend to contribute financially to the implementation of the new plan by the United Nations against cholera in Haiti.

"Earlier this week, the General Secretary sent a letter to all the Member states" in this respect, said Spokeswoman Stéphane Dujarric to journalists at the daily information session at UN headquarters in New York.

"As you know, within the framework of the new approach, the UN plans to intensify its support for the Haitian government by setting up systems of water supply, purification and health - the best long-term defense against cholera and other diseases of hydric origin. It also plans to develop a set of measures of support to supply material help and assistance to the Haitians most directly affected by the cholera."

In his letter, the General Secretary reminded that the UN has the moral responsibility to watch that the new approach, launched in a report to member states on December 1st, 2016, is implemented, added Dujarric.

With a cost of about 400 million dollars during the next two years, the United Nations project, within the framework of the new approach, will address two concerns:

The first consists of an effort considerably strengthened and better financed to answer and reduce the incidence of cholera, while attacking the short and long-term problems regarding water, purification and health systems and by improving the access to healthcare and treatment.

On the $400 million programs intended to fight against cholera in Haiti, only "2 % of the promises for financing were kept," indicates the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his letter. "The voluntary contributions which we received are not still sufficient to cover what is planned," wrote Guterres, underlining that "If the financing does not materialize, another solution must be explored."

Until now, only South Korea, France, Liechtenstein, India, and Chile have contributed to the UN, the funds totaling  approximately 2 million dollars. Canada and Japan have separately pledged 7 million dollars.

The International Jazz Festival of Port-au-Prince has been launched

The 11th Edition of of the International Jazz Festival of Port-au-Prince "PAPJAZZ on 2017", moved because of the elections, will take place from Saturday March 4th until Saturday March 11th.

For its 11th edition, "PAPJAZZ" will host artists from Germany, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Cuba, Spain, France, Mexico, Panama, Switzerland, the United States and of course local Haitian artists and from the diaspora, who will present Creole jazz, but also a sample of the music of Haiti in all its diversity.

Jean Camille Bissereth pleads in favor of a real carnival industry in Haiti

P-au-P, February 24th, 2017 [AlterPresse] - The engineer-agronomist Jean Camille Bissereth, who is the general coordinator of the Foundation for the Development of Alternative Tourism in Haiti (Fondtah) calls for actions to be taken to transform  Haiti’s carnival, the country’s "biggest popular and cultural party," into a real industry, capable of drawing tourism.

Until now, we have not managed to make the carnival an industry, said Bissereth, who was a guest on the broadcast show, “TiChèzBa.”

He encouraged the implementation of infrastructures and accommodation facilities to allow the carnival to make this possible.

A restructuring of this event could favor in particular the tourism industry and job-creation throughout the country, he underlined.

However, he admits that the carnival as it is presently organized, even if relocated, cannot escape the centralization of Port-au-Prince. The capital, with its enormous constraints, hampers the development of local tourism.

In the past, local entrepreneurs always complained because they were neglected in order to benefit companies in the capital, which receive the best contracts.