Cité Soleil (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)

Cité Soleil (French pronunciation: [site sɔlɛj]; Haitian Creole: Site Solèy; English: Sun City) is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area in Haiti. Cité Soleil originally developed as a shanty town and grew to an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 residents, the majority of whom live in extreme poverty. The area is generally regarded as one of the poorest and most dangerous areas of the Western Hemisphere and it is one of the biggest slums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers and has a poorly maintained open canal system that serves as its sewage system, few formal businesses but many local commercial activities and enterprises, sporadic but largely unpaid for electricity, a few hospitals, and two government schools, Lycée Nationale de Cité Soleil, and École Nationale de Cité Soleil. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. Government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) with the participation of the local population. After the devastating 2010 earthquake, it took nearly two weeks for relief aid to arrive in Cité-Soleil.