Ten years ago, on January 12, an earthquake of 7 degrees devastated Haiti. As the most powerful earthquake in the region of the past 250 years, it is hard to describe the destruction that took place. Almost 320 thousand people lost their lives, and another 350 thousand suffered severe injuries. Moreover, around 1.5 million people lost their homes. Thus, in the history of catastrophes, there is no doubt Haiti could be at the top of the list given of the death toll and suffering caused.
The picture could hardly be worse: hospitals, churches, barracks, and schools collapsed. No medical supplies, water, fuel, or machinery were available to lead operations to rescue people who remained alive under the rubble. Many professionals, such as doctors, paramedics, firefighters, police, military, engineers, and others who were paramount at the time, either died, were injured or did not have the minimum equipment to act. In practical terms, the country was left without a government, infrastructure, vehicles, or telephone services, in addition to having broken chains of command and almost no Internet access.
The thousands of reports published during the following days coincided with the immense difficulty that countries and international organizations had to face to bring aid to those who needed it. The control tower of the Port-au-Prince airport had collapsed; the UN headquarters building gave in with its officials inside; the batteries of the radio systems soon failed. A few hours after the earthquake hit, there were incidences of plundering, looting, and rapes of minors who had been left alone and outdoors, as well as robbing belongings of the thousands of bodies that flooded the streets.
Never before had there been such a massive and broad mobilization of humanitarian aid resources. President Bill Clinton organized a meeting in Montreal, which allowed to build a fund that exceeded $15 billion. Despite the criticisms, which soon pointed out multiple distribution failures, an essential issue must not be overlooked: there were no mechanisms to receive the aid, store it, and deliver it to those who desperately needed it. There were acts of extreme violence, even against those who came to provide some support. Doctors and volunteers who were there agreed they did the best possible to address the desperate urgencies under the conditions in which they operated.
Before the earthquake struck, the Republic of Haiti was the poorest country on the continent and one of the poorest in the world. Back then, its estimated population was between 9.8 and 10.2 million people. At the end of 2018, the country had an approximate population of 11.2 million, distributed in a territory of 27,750 square kilometers. This data reveals that it is a densely populated territory, with more than 400 inhabitants per square kilometer. Poverty, together with overpopulation, lack of opportunities, natural disasters, political crisis, and violence (particularly gender violence and rape crimes against women, mainly minors), has created a significant population exodus.
About 2 million people make up the Haitian diaspora (20% of the population that lives on the Island today). There is a strong migratory tension towards the Dominican Republic, a neighboring country with whom they share the Hispaniola Island. Approximately 800 thousand Haitians live there, making it the second-largest diaspora concentration, after the million people living in the United States.
One of the most recent immigration legal battles in US courts concerned the Trump’s administration decision not to renew the temporary protected status (TPS) that benefits almost 50 thousand Haitians. The federal courts decided to suspend deportations (of Haitians and citizens of other countries designated for this migrant protection status), considering that the government’s decision violated the legal provisions that makeup TPS. In fact, the administration was not able to justify that Haiti had overcome the circumstances that gave rise to the TPS.
There have been enormous and constant difficulties throughout Haiti’s history. Often, people forget that it was a pioneer nation on the continent: in 1804, the so-called Slave Revolution gave way to the first black republic that achieved its purpose. It was the first country in Latin America to reach its liberation, although it was not recognized as a republic internationally until 1825. The anti-colonial movement, clearly inspired in the ideology of the French Revolution, ended the French colony of Saint-Domingue—that that was the name the French had designated to the territory—and gave way to what was called the First Empire of Haiti.
Towards the end of the 18th century, under the slavery regime, Saint-Domingue produced almost 30% of the world’s sugar. However, after the revolution, an era of unusual turbulence began. The nascent republic was blocked and forced to pay compensation to France. Furthermore, it had internal struggles between its leaders. It also suffered an impact from the war of independence that divided the Hispaniola Island and, as of 1821, led to the so-called First Independence of the Dominican Republic.
If the entire history of the continent is a sequence of instability, despotisms, coups, internal wars, invasions, and the most complex avatars, in Haiti, the difficulties have been incessant. To make things even more complicated, in little over two centuries, there have been other telluric movements, hurricanes, and floods, which have been real factors of impoverishment.
After the 2010 earthquake, approximately three-quarters of the economy paralyzed. Stating that Haiti is the poorest country on the continent is no exaggeration: about 80% of its population lives below the poverty line, with income, when they have some, below two dollars per person. Of the 196 countries in the world that report GDP, Haiti ranks at 173. In 2018, for example, GDP per capita was approximately $740. That same year, it was about $3600 in the Dominican Republic, which has a similar population.
According to ECLAC, Haiti grew 1.2% in 2017 and 1.4% in 2018. Inflation was 15.4% in 2017 and 14.6% in 2018. The fiscal deficit grew alarmingly, from 3.9 to 6.5% in one year, and the Haitian currency, the gourde, suffered depreciation against the dollar—all in an environment of constant political and social instability. Efforts to achieve a minimum balance in public finances, which required restructuring the parastatal electricity company and reducing the amount of what the State invests in the fuel subsidy, failed again in mid-2019. This event unleashed a political crisis that prompted the resignation of Prime Minister Jean-Michel Lapin last July. Lapin was the third prime minister who resigned from office within one year. Before that, Jack Guy Lafontant and Jean-Henry Céant had resigned in July 2018 and March 2019, respectively. When Lapin presented his economic plan to Parliament, the debate ended, and a pitched battle—literally—broke out between senators who used everything they found within their reach, including chairs, tables, and other furniture, to settle their differences.
A general review of the economic scenario in Haiti is undoubtedly worrying. First, I must mention the devastation of the country’s forests. Around 1900, 40% of the country’s surface was still wooded. That amount has been reduced to 0.32%—a little over 80 square kilometers. The trees have become firewood for cooking and other uses. According to World Bank data, 80% of the population attends to their energy needs with wood extracted from forests. Only 40% of the population has access to electricity service, and about half of that segment of society cannot afford it.
Consequently, there has been an extraordinary loss of fauna and plant species, as well as a disruption to the water production cycle. Not only have hundreds of thousands of trees been destroyed, but also dozens of ecosystems can no longer recover. I read in the Spanish newspaper El País that, if trees are demolished at the same rate, the country will run out of its native forests by 2036. Associated with the above is the issue of erosion and loss of soil quality, whose indicator shows that it is thirty times higher than the world average. If this trend is not corrected, more than 95% of Haitian soil would be condemned to desertification in under two decades.
The destruction of the soil is not as one might think, just an environmental crisis: it is, above all, nutritional. About two-thirds of the Haitian population lives from agriculture and subsistence fishing managed by families. Approximately 50% of families keep small crops, which are increasingly affected by droughts or hurricanes. In some cases, families raise birds or livestock for domestic consumption. Hurricane Matthew, which hit the southern part of the Haitian territory in September 2016, destroyed the small plantations of some 100 thousand families in addition to killing almost a thousand people.
Haiti’s state of chronic poverty has also had another impact: there is almost no public education. Religious entities, NGOs, or small private companies lead around 84% of schools. To sustain themselves, these institutions charge tuition, which constitutes a very high barrier of entry for a large percentage of the population. According to a 2015 World Bank estimate, about 200 thousand children are not in school. Inter-American Development Bank reports show dreadful data on the quality of teachers. When comparing the results of school performance tests conducted in many countries, among fourth-grade children, the evidence is indisputable: while the world average, for example, of reading comprehension, is 90%, in Haiti, it is 50%. Something similar happens with mathematics. It is enough to warn that, according to FAO, about 54% of the population lives in conditions of hunger. A third of children have delayed growth indicators.
After a complicated electoral process and undergoing accusations of fraud, Jonevel Moïse became the president of Haiti from February 2017 to January 2022. In these two years, five prime ministers have succeeded. Although it is a short period, the protests have followed one after another. In some cases, with a painful number of lives lost. The devaluation of the currency, inflation, fuel shortages, and allegations of corruption—especially those referring to the destination of resources from international aid—have created an atmosphere that seems, right now, to advocate for even higher environment volatility.
Haiti’s economy is extraordinarily fragile. Its most widespread economic activity, the production of textile products, is subject to international price variations. Without foreign aid and remittances—Haiti is one of the five countries in the world, in which remittances represent more than 25% of GDP—the situation would be even more catastrophic.
Addressing the future of Haiti can hardly happen with preconceived formulas. The needs are so great and so urgent that any attempt to plan investments in infrastructure, agricultural development, public services, or education, immediately encounters food, health, or family emergencies that do not have a roof to shelter.
This extreme and complex framework causes a continuous impatience in society, intolerance, and greed in politicians, as well as the appearance of mafias that try to take advantage of all this state of affairs. However, there is something that nobody should forget: the goal of reaching basic nutrition levels for all children in Haiti, as well as education for children under 12 years, cannot be postponed. If only those two goals were fulfilled, two enormous steps would have been taken towards the goal of changing the hard destiny that has touched the Haitian nation.
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