Cité Soleil

According to UN reports more than a billion people – or every third city dweller – currently live in deprived neighbourhoods.  Cité Soleil, with 200,000-400,000 inhabitants, is the largest settlement of this type in Haiti, inhabited mostly by children and young adults. Slightly fewer than half of its buildings are constructed of building materials in the traditional sense -the remainder is made up of shacks cobbled together from all kinds of waste products. The electricity grid works sporadically, and only 30-40% of the houses are connected to the open sewer system. Law enforcement services scarcely operate here. The slum has a single school and a few hospitals, while there are barely any legally registered businesses most commerce taking place in informal small shops.