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HAITI
The native Taino - who inhabited the island of Hispaniola when it was discovered by Christopher
Columbus in 1492 - were virtually annihilated by Spanish settlers within 25 years. In the early
17th century, the French established a presence on Hispaniola. In 1697, Spain ceded to the
French the western third of the island, which later became Haiti. The French colony, based on
forestry and sugar-related industries, became one of the wealthiest in the Caribbean but only
through the heavy importation of African slaves and considerable environmental degradation. In
the late 18th century, Haiti's nearly half million slaves revolted under Toussaint L'ouverture.
After a prolonged struggle, Haiti became the first post-colonial black-led nation in the world,
declaring its independence in 1804. Currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere,
Haiti has experienced political instability for most of its history. After an armed rebellion led to
the forced resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February 2004, an interim
government organized new elections under the auspices of the UN. Continued instability and
technical delays prompted repeated postponements, but Haiti inaugurated a democratically
elected president and parliament in May 2006. This was followed by contested elections in 2010
that resulted in the election of Haiti's current President, Michel Martelly.
Flags symbolism
There are two equal horizontal bands of blue (top) and red with a centered white rectangle
bearing the coat of arms, which contains a palm tree flanked by flags and two cannons above a

scroll bearing the motto L'UNION FAIT LA FORCE (Union Makes Strength); the colors are
taken from the French Tricolor and represent the union of blacks and mulattoes1.

Ethnicity
Nearly all of Haiti considers itself of African descent, many of whose ancestors were brought to
the region by the slave trade. These slaves came from all parts of Africa, but it seems most
arrived from what is today known as the Congo, Benin, and Nigeria. Many of these people are a
combination of ethnicities though, including ethnic Africans with scant traces of ethnic
Europeans and American Indians2.

Language
Both French and creole are official languages in Haiti, although most people tend to speak creole
as their native language. This language is similar to French, but has numerous foreign
introductions, most notably from English. The people generally speak creole amongst
themselves, but use the more formalized French in official settings, such as business and
schools3.
1 See http://www.worldflags101.com/h/haiti-flag.aspx

2 Murray, G. F. (2010, May 24). Dominican- Haitian Racial and Ethnic Perception and
Sentiments: Mutual adaptions, mutual tensions and mutual anxieties. Retrieved from Pan
American Development Foundation:
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/murray/research/dominican_republic/dominican_haitian_perceptions.
pdf

3 See http://www.omniglot.com/writing/haitiancreole.htm

Religion
Roman Catholics make up most of Haiti's population consisting of about 80% of the people.
Nearly all of the other 20% are Protestant in some form with about half of these people being
Baptist. Also, many of voodoo's rituals have been incorporated into the local religions so Haiti's
definition of Catholicism or Protestantism may differ slightly from how others define these
religions.
Catholicism is a Christian religion that is one of the first Christian religions (founded after the
death of Jesus in about 30-33 AD). Catholicism believes that there is a single God who created
everything, a savior, the son of God, Jesus Christ who is the forgiver of sins, and there is the
Holy Spirit, which makes up the last part of the Holy Trinity. Catholics follow the teachings of
the Bible, consisting of the Old and New Testaments. Much of the faith is based on the life and
teachings of Jesus, which is found in the gospels (in the New Testament)4.

Population
Considering that Haiti is one of the poorest country in the whole world. It also cannot erase the
fact that there are only countable community residing in the region or area. As of 2015, there are
10.57 million living in Haiti5.

4 See http://www.aidforhaiti.org/learn-more/about-haiti/religion-in-haiti
5 See http://data.worldbank.org/country/haiti

Geography
Caribbean, western one-third of the island of Hispanola, between the Caribbean Sea and the
North Atlantic Ocean, west of the Dominican Republic. With respect to the geographic
coordinates, the exact location of Haiti is 19 00 N, 72.5 W with a total area of 27,750 sq km, land
is 27,560 sq km, and water is 190 sq km, thus is slightly smaller than Maryland6.

Climate
The countrys climate is tropical; semiarid where mountains in east cut off trade winds.
(http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?
page=country_historical_climate&ThisRegion=North%20America&ThisCCode=HTI)

Environment-current issues
One of this is extensive deforestation (much of the remaining forested land is being cleared for
agriculture and used as fuel); soil erosion; inadequate supplies of potable water. However, there
are international agreements on Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol,
Desertification, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, and Ozone Layer
Protection7.

Government
6 See http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/haiti-facts/
7 See http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Haiti-ENVIRONMENT.html

Republic of Haiti is what they call for a conventional long form while, simply Haiti in short
conventional form.
Type of government
Haiti is a republic. There 10 departments (departements, singular - departement); Artibonite,
Centre, Grand'Anse, Nippes, Nord, Nord-Est, Nord-Ouest, Ouest, Sud, Sud-Est. They had their
independence on January 1804 from France. Their Legal System is Civil law system strongly
influenced by Napoleonic Code. When it talks about the International Law Organization
participation, it accepts compulsory ICJ jurisdiction; non-party to the JCCt. In suffrage, legal
voter must be of 18 years old8.
Executive branch:
The chief of state is President Michael Martelly since 14 May 2011. The head of the government
is the Prime Minister Evans Paul, since 16 January 2015. The cabinet is chosen by the Prime
Minister in consulation with the president. The process on elections/appointments are under the
power of the President in which he directly elect by absolute majority popular vote in 2 rounds if
needed for a 5-year term (eligible for a single non-consecutive term); election last held on 28
November 2010 with a runoff on 20 March 2011 (next tentatively scheduled for October 2015);
prime minister chosen by the president from among members of the majority party in the
National Assembly.
Legislative branch:

8 See http://countrystudies.us/haiti/64.htm

The bicameral legislature or "le Corps Legislatif ou parlement" consists of le Senat or Senate (30
seats; members directly elected in multi-seat constituencies by absolute majority vote in two
rounds if needed; members serve 6-year terms with one-third of the membership renewed every
2 years) and la Chambre de deputes or Chamber of Deputies (99 seats; members directly elected
in single-seat constituencies by absolute majority vote in two rounds if needed; members serve 4year terms); note - when the two chambers meet collectively it is known as L'Assemblee
Nationale or the National Assembly that is convened for specific purposes spelled out in the
constitution
Elections: Senate - last held on 28 November 2010 with run-off election on 20 March 2011 (next
possible election on 26 October 2014); Chamber of Deputies - last held on 28 November 2010
with run-off election on 20 March 2011 (next regular election may be held on 26 October 2014)
Election results: 2010 Senate - percent of vote by party - NA; seats by party - Inite 6,
ALTENATIV 4, LAVNI 1; 2010 Chamber of Deputies- percent of vote by party - NA; seats by
party - Inite 32, Altenativ 11, Ansanm Nou Fo 10, AAA 8, LAVNI 7, RASANBLE 4, KONBIT 3,
MOCHRENA 3, Platforme Liberation 3, PONT 3, Repons Peyizan 3, MAS 2, MODELH-PRDH
1, PLAPH 1, RESPE 1, Veye Yo 1, independent 2, vacant 4
Judicial branch:
Highest court(s): Supreme Court or Cour de Cassation (consists of a chief judge and other
judges); note - Haiti is a member of the Caribbean Court of Justice
Judge selection and term of office: judges appointed by the president from candidate lists
submitted by the Senate of the National Assembly; note - Article 174 of the Haiti Constitution

states "Judges of the Supreme Court.... are appointed for 10 years." whereas Article 177 states
"Judges of the Supreme Court..... are appointed for life."
Subordinate courts: Courts of Appeal; Courts of First Instance; magistrates' courts; special
courts
International organization participation:
ACP, AOSIS, Caricom, CD, CDB, CELAC, FAO, G-77, IADB, IAEA, IBRD, ICAO, ICC
(NGOs), ICRM, IDA, IFAD, IFC, IFRCS, ILO, IMF, IMO, Interpol, IOC, IOM, IPU, ITSO,
ITU, ITUC (NGOs), LAES, MIGA, NAM, OAS, OIF, OPANAL, OPCW, PCA, Petrocaribe, UN,
UNCTAD, UNESCO, UNIDO, Union Latina, UNWTO, UPU, WCO, WFTU (NGOs), WHO,
WIPO, WMO, WTO

Economy
Haiti is a free market economy that enjoys the advantages of low labor costs and
tariff-free access to the US for many of its exports. Poverty, corruption,
vulnerability to natural disasters, and low levels of education for much of the
population are among Haiti's most serious impediments to economic growth. Haiti's
economy suffered a severe setback in January 2010 when a 7.0 magnitude
earthquake destroyed much of its capital city, Port-au-Prince, and neighboring
areas. Currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with 80% of the
population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty, the earthquake
further inflicted $7.8 billion in damage and caused the country's GDP to contract. In
2011, the Haitian economy began recovering from the earthquake. However, two

hurricanes adversely affected agricultural output and the low public capital
spending slowed the recovery in 2012. Two-fifths of all Haitians depend on the
agricultural sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable
to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country's widespread
deforestation.

US

economic

engagement

under

the

Caribbean

Basin Trade

Preference Agreement (CBTPA) and the 2008 Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity

through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE II) Act helped increase apparel exports
and investment by providing duty-free access to the US. Congress voted in 2010 to
extend the CBTPA and HOPE II until 2020 under the Haiti Economic Lift Program
(HELP) Act; the apparel sector accounts for about 90% of Haitian exports and
nearly one-twentieth of GDP. Remittances are the primary source of foreign
exchange, equaling one-fifth of GDP and representing more than five times the
earnings from exports in 2012. Haiti suffers from a lack of investment, partly
because of weak infrastructure such as access to electricity. Haiti's outstanding
external debt was cancelled by donor countries following the 2010 earthquake, but
has since risen to $1.43 billion as of December 2014. The government relies on
formal international economic assistance for fiscal sustainability, with over half of
its annual budget coming from outside sources 9 .

Military
There are no regular military forces - small Coast Guard; a Ministry of National
Defense established May 2012; the regular Haitian Armed Forces (FAdH) - Army,
9 See http://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/haiti/economy

Navy, and Air Force - have been demobilized but still exist on paper until or unless
they are constitutionally abolished (2011) 10 .

Traditional allies and enemies

Yet, as some traditional allies across Europe to contribute financial and military prowess to
international missions, countries further along the democratic transition in Latin and Central
America as well as Asia, such as India, China, Brazil, and Mexico are the allies of Haiti.
However, it can be seen that there are no specific allies of this country because of its poor
economic development to the extent nobody could benefit from it11

Haitis social concerns

Consider the following situation that Haiti is in:

Haiti is the third hungriest country in the world after Somalia and Afghanistan

The richest 1% of the population controls nearly half of all of Haitis wealth

The poorest country in the western hemisphere

One of the poorest countries in the world

10 See http://www.theodora.com/wfbcurrent/haiti/haiti_military.html
11 Bongie, C. (2008). Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Post/colonial Literature.
Cambridge: Liver Pool University Press. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.ph/books?
id=ZaTGbfYDB7gC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=haiti+traditional+enemies&source=bl&ots=7
1m23M84Zm&sig=9U9kIsoadGjRU_L2g8KHhuBu7_g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAmoVC
hMIpc-QvK6pyAIVxJmICh3z6gTq#v=onepage&q=haiti%20traditional%20enemies&f=f

Ranks 149 out of 182 on the United Nations Human Development Index

Has a healthy life expectancy of 55 years for women and 53 years for men

Adult literacy is about 62%

78% of Haitians live on less than $2 US per day.

Haiti has had problems for decades. Furthermore, since its very beginnings as a modern state
some 200 years ago, Haiti has constantly been affected by outside influences and interests,
negatively impacting its own destiny12.

The Economic History of Haiti

As compared to the political history, the economic history of Haiti is relatively simple. The
original economic basis for the Spanish colonies on Hispaniola was sugar plantations. The
French continued the sugar economy and introduced coffee. There were other plantation crops
grown such as cotton and cacao for chocolate but it was sugar and coffee that were the most
important. Under the French plantation system, based upon slave labor, Haiti was an enormously
profitable operation. The Haitian sugar economy was in competition with the northeast region of
Brazil, which previously had been the major source of sugar for Europe. The French sugar and
coffee operations in Haiti were so productive that its exports to Europe were comparable and
perhaps exceeded the total exports of the British North American colonies.
After the battles associated with independence there was some attempts to retain the large scale
plantation agriculture of the colonial period but that effort was doomed. Land was distributed
12 See http://www.globalissues.org/article/141/haiti

into small scale farms but these units devoted only a fraction of their resources to growing export
crops like sugar and coffee. Often the output is consumed domestically and there are no exports
of sugar or coffee.
In the latter part of the 20th century tourism became an important element of the economic base
of Haiti. But the political instability and the public's association of Haiti with AIDS severely
crippled the Haitian tourism industry. In recent decades the low wage rates of Haiti have
attracted manufacturing assembly operations. Haiti is one of the few countries that has pay scales
low enough to compete with China.
The development of manufacturing assembly operations in Haiti was helped greatly by changes
in the tariff rules that allowed Haitian operations to function much like the maquilidoras of the
U.S.-Mexican border areas where the products assembled from material from U.S. sources could
re-enter the U.S. without duties being charged13.

Current conflicts
The security situation has improved significantly since the major operations undertaken against
gangs in early 2007, but crime and urban violence remain pervasive. Since December 2007,
several areas of Port-au-Prince have experienced an increase in criminality and in the number of
kidnappings. There are also recurrent indications that gangs may be trying to reorganize
themselves.
Anti-Government demonstrations have increased, with a particular focus on the rising cost of
living. Some of those protests appear to have been organised by political groups and, while they
13 See http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/haiti.htm

have been limited in scale, they have occurred in a number of areas of the country. There is a risk
that those who perceive their interests to be threatened by ongoing reform processes may
deliberately seek to foster additional disturbances, including through orchestrated acts of
violence. In regions outside the capital, the security situation remains generally calm, but
occurrences of unrest and "popular justice" have been reported. Misunderstandings between local
communities in the border region have shown a tendency to escalate in the absence of state
authority.

Past conflict
When Haiti was hit by the devastating earthquake in 2010, its island neighbour, the Dominican
Republic, rushed to help. It was among the first to send rescue workers, food and water, and also
allowed overseas relief agency flights to land at Santo Domingo airport.
But three years on, the goodwill seems to have dissipated and old tensions resurfaced. Just over a
week ago the Dominican Republic's highest court ruled to revoke the citizenship of children of
illegal Haitian migrant workers a measure to be applied to anyone born after 1929, and thus
affecting not only migrants' children, but their grandchildren and, in some cases, even greatgrandchildren.
This is the latest legal attack on the rights of Haitians and their descendants; measures in the past
few years have included reclassifying migrant workers as "in transit" rather than legal residents.
This meant any child born in the Dominican Republic which had been one basis for citizenship
also needed one Dominican parent, or one who was a legal resident.

The latest ruling could leave thousands who identify themselves as Dominican but may have had
a Haitian ancestor facing an uncertain future already some 40,000 people have been told they
will not receive identity documents. Without official papers, it is impossible to access services
such as schools or healthcare. Human rights groups and local NGOs have expressed their
concern, and the UN will be reviewing this ruling.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola, where Christopher Columbus
established the first European settlement in 1492. Despite their shared history of colonialism and
slavery, dictatorship and oppression, a physical and emotional border has long separated them.
The western third of the island was ceded by Spain to France in 1697, and the entire island by
1795. By 1801 the famed former slave General Toussaint Louverture had freed all the slaves on
the island and united it under his governorship, though this was short-lived.
In 1808, a group of Dominicans started the war of reconquest to drive out the French and return
the eastern part the island to Spanish rule the west by this point was the republic of Haiti. But
by 1822 Haiti had established control of the whole island once more. Indeed, the Dominican
Republic gained its independence from Haiti, not Spain, in 1844.
Modern times have been no less complicated. In 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo who
wore makeup to lighten his skin and was obsessed with "whitening" the predominantly mixedrace island ordered the massacre of Haitians in border areas, where many worked cultivating
sugar. To determine who was Haitian, soldiers with machetes asked dark-skinned people to say
the word "perejil", which is Spanish for parsley. For Creole-speaking Haitians, the "r" sound was
difficult to pronounce, and a slip of the tongue became a death sentence. Estimates of the

massacre range from 10,000 to 25,000 people killed over the course of a few weeks. And the
bitter irony was that Trujillo's grandmother was Haitian.
Today the border continues to inspire fear. Dominican-born children of Haitian descent number
around 210,000, in a nation of 10 million. Haitians have long been migrant workers, with many
finding seasonal employment in sugar cane fields or other low-wage work, which has become
especially crucial in the aftermath of the earthquake. And, like immigrants elsewhere, they are
2013060357 (3POL2)
often blamed for taking jobs. At the same time, racialised fears of "Haitianisation" are still
regularly voiced by politicians and sections of the media, though many Dominicans have
expressed shock and anger over the court's decision. But violence is still directed at Haitians;
crimes against them often go unreported; and many continue to live in dire poverty.
Deportations of workers who have no chance to appeal are common the Dominican military
reported it sent away some 47,700 Haitians in the past year, up from 21,000 the year before. And
now tens of thousands of people who consider themselves Dominicans face a one-way trip to a
country where they cannot speak the language, may not have any family, and face extreme
economic hardship. The Haitian government said it "strongly disagrees" with the decision and
has recalled its ambassador to the Dominican Republic for consultations on the implications of
the ruling.
Anti-Haitianism in the Dominican Republic reaches back decades, if not centuries;
unacknowledged and institutionalised, it has been manipulated and put to political use. Rather
than being united by their shared histories, the two sides of Hispaniola remain riven by an

unresolved past. It is not yet clear how this ruling will be turned into policy, but in facing such an
uncertain future, these Dominicans also carry with them a heavy burden of the past14.

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Bongie, C. (2008). Friends and Enemies: The Scribal Politics of Post/colonial Literature.
Cambridge: Liver Pool University Press. Retrieved from
https://books.google.com.ph/books?
id=ZaTGbfYDB7gC&pg=PA67&lpg=PA67&dq=haiti+traditional+enemies&source=bl&
ots=71m23M84Zm&sig=9U9kIsoadGjRU_L2g8KHhuBu7_g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC
YQ6AEwAmoVChMIpc-QvK6pyAIVxJmICh3z6gTq#v=onepage&q=haiti
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14 See http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=conflict_haiti_dominican

Murray, G. F. (2010, May 24). Dominican- Haitian Racial and Ethnic Perception and
Sentiments: Mutual adaptions, mutual tensions and mutual anxieties. Retrieved from Pan
American Development Foundation:
http://users.clas.ufl.edu/murray/research/dominican_republic/dominican_haitian_percepti
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