Haitian Youth's Reality

S

ince many decades now, Haiti has encountered many difficulties in ensuring the security for its Citizens and Foreigners in the country. For many past years, which is probably the case today, Haiti was well-known for its high rate of criminality, in addition to being also well-known for being the poorest country with the most unemployed in the Western Hemisphere. This high criminality rate is considered by many, experiencing first-hand the reality of this country and its youth, to be the primary reason of International Investors’ reluctance to coming and investing in Haiti; according to those same people, the high criminality rate and the young Haitian citizen graduated from High school who cannot afford Higher studies are totally interwoven and interrelated and sorting the latter out will automatically mitigate the impact of the other. The one-million dollar question that always comes out is “How comes the criminality in Haiti is linked to the Youth?”

Most of the Northern and Emerging countries have developed educational and training programs for Youth so that they can participate in the long run to the development of their country. These countries believe that investing in human is one of the first step for a country to take in order to grow economically and also, that investment done in human at an early age that could be considered between 18-25 years old, in educating them, would be helpful in order to prevent the young people to turn to illegal activities because of a feeling of exclusion generated in them; and it will allow them to be aware earlier of the problems adults are facing so that they can start thinking and working to find better solutions. At this age, it is mandatory for a country’s political leaders to focus  on capacity development and education for the Youth due to the fact they can be influenced easily to any kind of illegal activity and because of their sudden desire, at that same age, for independency.

The Northern and Emerging countries tag the need for educating and mentoring young people as priority, because they recognize how important it is for the stability of a country to train that age group aforementioned at the most vulnerable stage of a man’s life where changes are often radical.

Law school

In Haiti, the largest number of young people who cannot afford paying school and sometimes cannot eat is from a seemingly second-class, but this second-class name assigned to them is rather a cover to prevent people living abroad from seeing and saying that 90% of the Haitian population is poor and unable to entirely meet their needs. Those people, due to a lack of fund and income generating activity, have their children ceased with their high school and sometimes cannot go to University. This situation, excessively dependent on the response of each to abject situations, often conducts the youngest one into doing whatever they can, whether good or bad, in order to gain the least to survive. “But what is it we can do when living in a country where the responsible people don’t really care about you” what they are constantly thinking about, so many times these unanswered questions that come to their mind usually make them turn themselves to criminal activities that they consider as a making-money-come-easy way.

Income generating activities for young people

Talking about security, these young people became dangerous by the simple fact that they are not taken into account by the elected ones who were supposed to take care of them. These young people that should normally be at school and University in order to partake to their country’s development often generate terror when their name are called or said in the news. They engage themselves in all sorts of illegal activities (such as robbery, kidnapping, carjacking, drug dealing etc.) with the aim of earning money in order to live. 

In their community, people who do as they say, can be dwelt by a feeling of security because they have the promise that they will not be hurt but those who refuse to comply with their words, can be severely punished, killed or feeling themselves forced to leave the neighborhood (which will, as well, be made impossible because these same young terrorists will not let them to). In most places where such situation is occurring, Police forces cannot make any intervention and projects, in order to develop these communities, are either unable to be implemented or fail while being implemented. 

Some project implementers have experienced major loss during and after projects implementation in certain communities, mostly equipments loss that were stolen by those young people to be sold after.

Spencer R. SPADY