Haiti Fast Facts
A country that has for the last decade and a half been the most violent in the world has now gone through a decade of rapid economic growth.
Haiti’s government is the most corrupt, with the highest rate of police in Latin America.
Haiti is the only country in the world without legal protection for gay citizens.
Haiti has the longest running civil war in the world, which has raged for over 20 years, killing more than 250,000 people and leaving millions homeless.
Since 1994, the US has sent two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Caribbean under an annual military exercise.
Haiti is the poorest country in Central America. It is one of the three poorest countries in the world, being one of 12 where extreme poverty is defined as having an income below $1.25 per day.
The poorest 40% of Haiti’s population live on $1.57 to $2.36 per day, while the highest brackets live on over $5.00 per day.
Only 22% of Haiti’s land is arable and about 11% is forest.
There is no history of slave rebellions or of widespread poverty due to foreign interference (the largest of these was the American occupation from 1804 to 1815; the invasion was in reaction to the United Kingdom and France).
There is no historical source of resistance to foreign powers, like that which occurred in Haiti. The only sources of resistance come from local groups and from the US occupation, which caused a great number of deaths.
Haiti’s most pressing problem is food insecurity, exacerbated by a lack of farming. This leaves millions of Haitians in the face of an ever-increasing poverty every year.
Haiti has the largest number of refugees from cholera in history, and has the highest rate of hospitalisation.
About 2.5 million people are living below the poverty line in Haiti, an amount made up of 4.9 million people living on $1.57 per day (the lowest level of poverty, a far from the most extreme,