More than 200 years after a slave rebellion turned Haiti into the world’s first free Black republic, the country is mired in gang warfare, political chaos, devastating poverty and widespread corruption. Foreign aid, more than $13 billion in the last decade and a half, has failed to solve any of the country’s problems, and may well have made them worse. Last month, 400 Kenyan peacekeepers entered the country to try to restore order.
Canada was asked by the U.S. to do that job because it has a long history with the nation, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau balked at making the commitment.
In too many people’s eyes, Haiti isn’t a country and its inhabitants aren’t people, it’s just a hell on earth. But Haitian Guenson Charlot, who knows what it’s like to be born into abject poverty, has a vision, a dream where Haiti isn’t beholden to foreigners and where the people themselves can rise to rescue their country from the grip of destitution, dishonesty, despair and distrust. The youngest of nine children and the only one to graduate from high school, Charlot is now the president of Emmaus University in northern Haiti.
Its aim: to prepare the influencers of the future, the Haitians who will change their own country. Already doctors, lawyers, politicians, businessmen, even a judge have graduated from the master’s program. But can Haiti, a country that has been called the “Republic of NGOs” because of all the foreign aid and international organizations, be weaned .