Cité Soleil (Kreyol: Site Solèy, English: Sun City) is an extremely impoverished and densely populated commune located in the Port-au-Princemetropolitan 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 biggestslums in the Northern Hemisphere. The area has virtually no sewers, stores, electricity, health care facilities or schools. For several years until 2007, the area was ruled by a number of gangs, each controlling their own sectors. But government control was reestablished after a series of operations in early 2007 by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
The neighborhood, originally designed to house manual laborers for a local Export Processing Zone (EPZ) in the 1960s, quickly became home to squattersfrom around the countryside looking for work in the newly constructed factories. However, after a 1991 coup d'état deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a boycott of Haitian products closed the EPZ. Cité Soleil was then thrust into extreme poverty and persistent unemployment, with high rates of illiteracy.
Armed gangs roamed the streets and terrorized the neighborhood. Every few blocks was controlled by one of more than 30 armed factions. Though the gangs no longer rule, murder, rape, kidnapping, looting, and shootings are still common. The area has been called a "microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, insanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence".
After the 2010 Haiti earthquake, it took nearly two weeks for relief aid to arrive in Cité-Soleil. Although the US military had willingly accepted their new role, their relief efforts have been criticized by some as insufficient.
