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Op HAMLET is the Canadian Armed Forces contribution to MINUSTAH,
the United Nations mission promoting stability in Haiti.
Minustah is a UN peacekeeping operation that came to Haiti in
2004, to help this country, to the stabilization of the
situation, for reconstruction and to enforce the institution,
the national institution.
Canada has boosted up HAMLET over the past few months by the
addition of 34 members from "Secteur du Québec" or newly
renamed 2nd Canadian Division. We have a platoon embedded in
the Brazilian battle group. We also have a few staff officers
embedded in the Brazilian headquarters. Upon my arrival, I
found that security really has stabilized across the country.
Things were, at the exception of one or two spots, much safer,
much more developed. The people were friendly, they were happy.
The markets are full of food. People were generally looking
cheerful, while there remain a level of poverty throughout the
country. Clearly the security situation improved greatly over
the past three or four years, but we also are really working
hard to improve the bilateral ties, which Canada has with Brazil.
Certainly on the military side we are getting more and more
involved trying to exchange experiences. They have amazing
experience dealing with crowded cities and large situations.
Soldier Bonjour monsieur, en forme? Loal civilian Yeah
Soldier Ouin t'es en forme? Parfait.
So our troops are really learning a lot about how to
operate in a large city like Port-au-Prince.
Canadians are really leveraged, largely because of the bilingual
nature that we have amongst people in the forces.
French is a historical language in Haiti, creole being the most
commonly spoken but many Haitian do speak French. We find that as
as Canadians we are able to communicate, not just with
Haitians but with many European country members that are
working here as part of the Minustah mission.
The 2010 earthquake left many people homeless and without
anywhere to live, any means to survive, to have a job and as a
result a number of IDP or internally displaced person camps
were setup across the country. We've reduced a number of people in IDP
camps down to about 200 000. It's important to know that that
was about the number of people living in these types of camp
before the earthquake struck. So we've certainly made a huge
improvement in helping to relocate, to build up housing
and to give people options on where they live and how they
survive. Of course there are a lot of environmental challenges
here. We are in the path, on the island of Hispaniola, of many
hurricanes and they're a lot of environmental disasters that can occur.
So there will always be a need for some sort of assistance,
but we are getting much better and I think by far the large
number of people that were displaced by earthquake have
another alternative on how to live.
Our number on priority remains maintaining the security and the
stability of the country and helping the Haitian national
police to increase their capacity.