While the new school year began Monday in Haiti, students of the Lycée Toussaint Louverture clashed with UN peacekeepers and the Haitian National Police (PNH) in Port-au-Prince. Dozens of students gathered outside the Ministry of Education to require the rehabilitation of their schools or at least new buildings to study.

The demonstration quickly gained momentum and turned violent when some students blocked roads and threw stones at cars. The police had to intervene and fire tear gas to disperse the crowd of demonstrators. In front of the risk of social flashover, the embassy of the United States advised with the American citizens to avoid the area where the demonstration took place.

Elsewhere in the capital, the reopening of classes was rather shy, the pupils, usually many at the time of a return to school seemed to have disappeared at certain places from the capital. Because of economic uncertainty, many parents find it difficult to raise the funds needed to pay school fees "My children do not attend school because I have no money to send them, nor even to pay a taxi to go there", said Alicia Louis, a mother of five children living in a homeless camp in Petionville.

Most private schools have operated at idle and the vast majority of public schools did not reopen its doors. In Port-au-Prince and several provincial towns, including Gonaives and Mirebalais, the parents invited the persons in charge of the education system to come to them to assistance to face the difficulties related to the re-entry of the classes.

BF/ HaitiLibre