Michaelle Jean [former Governor General of Canada], Special Envoy of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for Haiti, will make Wednesday a 24-hour visit in the capital, Port-au Prince to mark the first anniversary of the earthquake on January 12, 2010 and encourage efforts to rebuild the country. This will be her first trip to her home country since his appointment to UNESCO.

A visit that we remind her first statements, where under the shock, she said the day after the earthquake "The Haitian communities across Canada are like me heartbroken and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster. The images and news that are unbearable. [...] There is also what we imagine and that no image can capture and increases our sense of powerlessness."

On 14 January in tears, Michaëlle Jean had said "The images and news are unbearable [...] all this trouble, all this suffering, all this loss... There is also what we imagine and that no image can capture and increases our sense of powerlessness [...] It's incredible, it's like an atomic bomb fell on Port-au-Prince."

Learn more about Michaelle Jean:

She is born on September 6 1957, in Jacmel (Haiti), Michaelle Jean (the niece of the famous poet Rene Depestre) and her family fled the Duvalier dictatorship in 1968. Then aged of 11 years old, she began her new life in Thetford Mines, Quebec (Canada). She speaks five languages, French, English, Spanish, Italian and Creole. She is married to filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond. The couple has an adopted daughter, Marie-Eden, born in Haiti.

PI/ HaitiLibre