Thursday's Toronto Star had several interesting articles on unrest and violence around the world.

This article is on Haiti which is plodding along under a democratically-elected government for about a year now, whilst going through serious violent crime, poverty, HIV/AIDS and environmental troubles. Haiti, with its proud history as the first (and only) black country to win independence through force against the French, is actually the Western Hemisphere's poorest country and faces a bleak future. The article's author believes that Haiti needs continued foreign aid in order to experience any improvement at all, otherwise it might become a "failed state"- a country where the government and rule of law has "failed" completely and cannot serve society or maintain order at all. The current political stability is however one good aspect of the country and needs to continue in order for the country to improve any more.
The UN, including Canada, has been trying to help the country since the civil conflict and coup that forced former Prime Minister Jean-Bertrand Aristide out. This help has been seen as dubious by some who heavily criticise the UN for helping maintain an oppressive regime. For instance UN forces have trained Haitian police who, both UN and Haitian police, have engaged in raids and gunfights that have killed many and detained political prisoners. Zmag maintains a section dedicated to Haiti which accuses the US of facilitating regime change in the overthrow of Aristide and supporting an oppressive Haiti government in carrying out massacres, tortures and jailings of opposition figures.
I certainly think the US was complicit (or even gleeful) in allowing Aristide to be overthrown and for the rebels to take charge though I am not sure about other details, especially in what the US would gain from that turn of events.

This past week, serious fighting broke out in Lebanon as a Palestinian fundamentalist group Fatah al-Islam carried out a bank robbery which caused the Lebanese army to respond with strikes on the Palestinian refugee camp where the group is based in. Many people in the camp have been killed and thousands affected. The Lebanese army and government has been criticised for the attack on the camp as many civilian refugees were killed or injured. However the government defended these actions by saying that they were necessary to defeat the fundamentalists as well as to uphold the integrity and strength of the state.
It's interesting to see that the state does not have any rule over the Palestinian refugee camps as they are run by the refugees themselves. The continued existence of these refugee camps is a tragedy as it signifies that the Palestinians have not been able to integrate into society and so improve their wellbeing and be accepted. These Palestinians were originally from lands in Israel and were forced out when Israel was being created. Given that this was in the late 40s, this means that many of these Palestinians were born and grew up in the camps. Such a sad fate for a people who have suffered much including being stripped of their land.