Haiti
Haiti is a country in the Caribbean region. It covers the western third of the island of
Hispaniola, which lies between Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea. The
Dominican Republic covers eastern Hispaniola. Most of Haiti is mountainous, and the
country's name comes from an Indian word that means high ground.
Haiti’s official name in French is République d’Haiti. Its official name in Creole is Repiblik
dAyiti. Both official names mean Republic of Haiti. Port-au-Prince is Haiti’s capital and
largest city.
Haiti is the oldest black republic in the world. In addition, it is the second oldest
independent nation in the Western Hemisphere. Only the United States is older. Haiti
has been independent since 1804. Most of the time, it has been ruled by dictators.
Haiti is one of the most densely populated and least developed countries in the Western
Hemisphere. Many Haitians are farmers who raise food mainly for their families. The
country has a shortage of hospitals and doctors. Because of poor diet and medical care—
especially in rural areas—the average life expectancy in Haiti is only about 50 years.
Source: http://www.worldbookonline.com/student/extmedia?id=ar242480&st=haiti&em=mp000089
Mission Statement from Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partners in
Health Website
Our mission is to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care. By
establishing long-term relationships with sister organizations based in settings of
poverty, Partners In Health strives to achieve two overarching goals: to bring the
benefits of modern medical science to those most in need of them and to serve as an
antidote to despair.
We draw on the resources of the world’s leading medical and academic institutions and
on the lived experience of the world’s poorest and sickest communities. At its root, our
mission is both medical and moral. It is based on solidarity, rather than charity alone.
When our patients are ill and have no access to care, our team of health professionals,
scholars, and activists will do whatever it takes to make them well—just as we would do
if a member of our own families or we ourselves were ill.
Source: http://www.pih.org/pages/our-mission
“The idea that some lives matter less is the
root of all that's wrong with the world.”
—DR. PAUL FARMER
Chief Strategist & Co-founder
Disaster in Haiti
An island neighbor of the U.S. struggles after a devastating earthquake
By Jill Lederman | January 15 , 2010
Map: Jim McMahon
Fast Facts About Haiti
Location: Shares the island of
Hispaniola with the Dominican
RepublicSize: Slightly smaller than
the state of Maryland
Major Languages: French and
Creole
Population: 9 million; 38 percent
are kids under 15
Economy: Haiti is the poorest
nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Most people live on less than $2 a
day.
People in the nation of Haiti are struggling to recover after a powerful earthquake caused
massive destruction there.
Tens of thousands of people in the Caribbean nation were killed, and many more were
injured. The Presidential Palace, which is like the White House here in the U.S., was among
the many government buildings that collapsed. Hospitals were destroyed, as were countless
homes. The disaster added more suffering to people already struggling to cope with
everyday life. Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world.
International aid groups are rushing to provide food, water, and medical aid to Haiti. People
worldwide are donating money to help. Many nations, including the U.S., are sending aid as
well as money. The U.S. is sending troops to help with rescue and relief efforts, and to
police the streets. “This is a time when we are reminded of the common humanity that we all
share,” U.S. President Barack Obama said.
Worst Earthquake in Caribbean in Centuries
The earthquake’s epicenter—the point on the Earth’s surface directly above where it
happened—was about 10 miles from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. Experts say it was the
worst earthquake in the region in more than 200 years.
The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale, which is very high. More than
30 aftershocks, or smaller earthquakes, came after the big quake.
What Caused the Quake?
The earthquake in Haiti occurred on a long fault, or crack in the Earth’s surface, that goes
across the island. This underground crack separates two giant tectonic plates, or slabs of
rock that make up Earth’s outer layer. Along the fault, the plates slowly grind past one
another in opposite directions. But this movement isn’t smooth. The plates’ edges get stuck
for long periods of time. Eventually, they may suddenly jerk free. That sudden movement is
what triggers an earthquake.
Worries About Loved Ones
Some Americans have a special concern about the situation in Haiti—family and friends.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. are from Haiti. They are anxiously seeking
news of loved ones. And like other Americans, they are working to help Haiti recover from
this disaster.
Source: http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3753355
2010 Haiti Earthquake
Introduction
The Haiti earthquake occurred in a seismically active region on January 12, 2010. Haiti and
the Dominican Republic were both hit by the earthquake. People had cut many of the trees
in Haiti for firewood to when they cooked. The bare hills increased the impact of the
earthquake and the human suffering in the country.
2010 Earthquake on Hispaniola Island, USGS
Hispaniola Island
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the island of Hispaniola. The Caribbean Plate is
slipping eastward in relation to the North American Plate. The 7.0 magnitude earthquake
occurred where the plates had been locked for 250 years prior to the rocks rupturing. The
part of the fault line that broke was 40 miles long and slipped about six feet.
Epicenter of the earthquake
The earthquake epicenter was sixteen miles west of Haiti's capital city Port-au-Prince. Three
million people were affected by the earthquake. It is estimated that 230,000 people died,
300,000 people were injured and 1,000,000 people were made homeless by the earthquake.
Today humanitarian aid from countries around the world continues to help the people of
Haiti rebuild their lives.
Future earthquakes
Scientists are concerned that a repeat of the 1751 earthquakes might occur. The
earthquakes were a sequence of quakes starting in the Dominican Republic that progressed
westward along the fault plane. Residents in the area are hoping this will not occur. They
hope that enough stress in the rocks has been released than another devastating
earthquake will not occur in the near future.
Source: http://www.kids-fun-science.com/haiti-earthquake.html
Click this link to see a short video on the aftermath of the 2010
earthquake: http://video.foxnews.com/v/3967372/new-video-ofhaiti-earthquake-wreckage/#sp=show-clips
Security video from inside the Haitian Presidential Palace during
the 2010 earthquake:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/7814086/Dramaticfootage-of-earthquake-destroying-Haiti-palace-emerges.html
Hurricanes and Haiti: A Tragic History
By Jeffrey Masters, Ph.D. — Director of Meteorology, Weather Underground, Inc.
In many ways, the hurricane season of 2008 was the cruelest ever experienced in Haiti. Four
storms--Fay, Gustav, Hanna, and Ike--dumped heavy rains on the impoverished nation. The
rugged hillsides, stripped bare of 98% of their forest cover thanks to deforestation, let flood
waters rampage into large areas of the country. Particularly hard-hit was Gonaives, the fourth
largest city. According to reliefweb.org, the rains from 2008's four storms killed 793, left 310
missing, injured 593, destroyed 22,702 homes, and damaged another 84,625. About 800,000
people were affected--8% of Haiti's total population. The flood wiped out 70% of Haiti's crops,
resulting in dozens of deaths of children due to malnutrition in the months following the storms.
Damage was estimated at over $1 billion, the costliest natural disaster in Haitian history. The
damage amounted to over 5% of the country's $17 billion GDP, a staggering blow for a nation so
poor.
Figure 1. The flooded city of Gonaives after Hurricane Hanna, September 3, 2008. Image credit:
Lambi Fund of Haiti.
The year 2008 was only one of many years hurricane have brought untold misery to
Haiti. Hurricane Jeanne of 2004 passed just north of the country as a tropical storm, dumping 13
inches of rains on the nation's northern mountains. The resulting floods killed over 3000 people,
mostly in the town of Gonaives. Jeanne ranks as the 12th deadliest hurricane of all time on the list
of the 30 most deadly Atlantic hurricanes . Unfortunately for Haiti, its name appears several
times on this list. Hurricane Flora killed over 8000 people in 1963, making it the 6th most deadly
hurricane ever. An unnamed 1935 storm killed over 2000, and Hurricane Hazel killed over 1000
in 1954. More recently, Hurricane Gordon killed over 1000 Haitians in 1994, and in
1998, Hurricane Georges killed over 400 while destroying 80% of all the crops in the country.
Surprisingly, only six major Category 3 and stronger hurricanes have struck Haiti since 1851.
The strongest hurricane to hit Haiti was Hurricane Cleoof 1964, which struck the southwestern
peninsula as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds, killing 192 people. Haiti's only other
Category 4 storm was Hurricane Flora of 1963, which had 145 mph winds when it struck the
southwestern peninsula, killing 8000. No Category 5 hurricanes have hit Haiti since 1851. The
most recent Category 3 hurricane to hit Haiti was Hurricane David of 1979, which crossed
northern Haiti as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds after hitting the Dominican
Republic as a Category 5 hurricane with 170 mph winds. David weakened quickly to a tropical
storm after crossing into Haiti, as caused no deaths in the country. The other major hurricanes to
strike Haiti were Hurricane Inez of 1966, which hit southern Haiti as a Category 3 hurricane with
115 mph winds, killing 480 people; Hurricane Katie of 1955, which hit near the Haiti/Dominican
Republic border with 115 mph winds, killing 7; and Hurricane Five of 1873, which hit the
southwestern peninsula with 115 mph winds.
Figure 2.Two of 2008's four tropical cyclones that ravaged Haiti: Tropical Storm Hanna (right)
and Hurricane Gustav (left). Image taken at 10:40 am EDT September 1, 2008. Image
credit: NASA/GSFC.
Why does Haiti suffer a seemingly disproportionate number of flooding disasters? The answer in
that in large part, these are not natural disasters--they are human-caused disasters. Haiti is the
poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. With oil too expensive for the impoverished nation,
charcoal from burnt trees has provided 85% or more of the energy in Haiti for decades. As a
result, Haiti's 8 million poor have relentlessly hunted and chopped down huge amounts of forest,
leaving denuded mountain slopes that rainwater washes down unimpeded. Back in 1980, Haiti
still had 25% of its forests, allowing the nation to withstand heavy rain events like 1979's
Category 3 Hurricane David without loss of life. But as of 2004, only 1.4% of Haiti's forests
remained. Jeanne and Gordon were not even hurricanes--merely strong tropical storms--when
they stuck Haiti, but the almost total lack of tree cover contributed to the devastating floods that
killed thousands. And it doesn't even take a tropical storm to devastate Haiti--in May of 2004,
three days of heavy rains from a tropical disturbance dumped more than 18 inches of rain in the
mountains, triggering floods that killed over 2600 people.
What can be done to reduce these human-worsened natural disasters? Education and poverty
eradication are critical to improving things. In addition, reforestation efforts and promotion of
alternative fuels are needed.
In the past two decades, the U.S. Agency for International Development has planted some 60
million trees, while an estimated 10 to 20 million of these are cut down each year, according to
the USAID director in Haiti, David Adams. If you're looking for a promising way to make a
charitable donation to help Haitian flood victims, considering sending a check to the Lambi Fund
of Haiti, which is very active in promoting reforestation efforts, use of alternative fuels, and
infrastructure improvements at a grass-roots level to help avert future flood disasters.
Source: http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/haiti.asp
The following article is from the OPINION page of the New York Times.
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature
By MARK DANNER
Published: January 21, 2010
HAITI is everybody’s cherished tragedy. Long before the great earthquake struck the country
like a vengeful god, the outside world, and Americans especially, described, defined, marked
Haiti most of all by its suffering. Epithets of misery clatter after its name like a ball and
chain: Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. One of the poorest on earth. For decades
Haiti’s formidable immiseration has made it among outsiders an object of fascination,
wonder and awe. Sometimes the pity that is attached to the land — and we see this
increasingly in the news coverage this past week — attains a tone almost sacred, as if Haiti
has taken its place as a kind of sacrificial victim among nations, nailed in its bloody suffering
to the cross of unending destitution.
Raymond Verdaguer
And yet there is nothing mystical in Haiti’s pain, no inescapable curse that haunts the land.
From independence and before, Haiti’s harms have been caused by men, not demons. Act of
nature that it was, the earthquake last week was able to kill so many because of the
corruption and weakness of the Haitian state, a state built for predation and plunder.
Recovery can come only with vital, even heroic, outside help; but such help, no matter how
inspiring the generosity it embodies, will do little to restore Haiti unless it addresses, as
countless prior interventions built on transports of sympathy have not, the man-made
causes that lie beneath the Haitian malady.
In 1804 the free Republic of Haiti was declared in almost unimaginable triumph: hard to
exaggerate the glory of that birth. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans had labored
to make Saint-Domingue, as Haiti was then known, the richest colony on earth, a vastly
productive slave-powered factory producing tons upon tons of sugar cane, the 18th-century’s
great cash crop. For pre-Revolutionary France, Haiti was an inexhaustible cash cow, floating
much of its economy. Generation after generation, the second sons of the great French
families took ship for Saint-Domingue to preside over the sugar plantations, enjoy the favors
of enslaved African women and make their fortunes.
Even by the standards of the day, conditions in Saint-Domingue’s cane fields were grisly and
brutal; slaves died young, and in droves; they had few children. As exports of sugar and
coffee boomed, imports of fresh Africans boomed with them. So by the time the slaves
launched their great revolt in 1791, most of those half-million blacks had been born in Africa,
spoke African languages, worshipped African gods.
In an immensely complex decade-long conflict, these African slave-soldiers, commanded by
legendary leaders like Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, defeated three
Western armies, including the unstoppable superpower of the day, Napoleonic France. In an
increasingly savage war — “Burn houses! Cut off heads!” was the slogan of Dessalines — the
slaves murdered their white masters, or drove them from the land.
On Jan. 1, 1804, when Dessalines created the Haitian flag by tearing the white middle from
the French tricolor, he achieved what even Spartacus could not: he had led to triumph the
only successful slave revolt in history. Haiti became the world’s first independent black
republic and the second independent nation in the Western Hemisphere.
Alas, the first such republic, the United States, despite its revolutionary creed that “all men
are created equal,” looked upon these self-freed men with shock, contempt and fear. Indeed,
to all the great Western trading powers of the day — much of whose wealth was built on the
labor of enslaved Africans — Haiti stood as a frightful example of freedom carried too far.
American slaveholders desperately feared that Haiti’s fires of revolt would overleap those
few hundred miles of sea and inflame their own human chattel.
For this reason, the United States refused for nearly six decades even to recognize Haiti.
(Abraham Lincoln finally did so in 1862.) Along with the great colonial powers, America
instead rewarded Haiti’s triumphant slaves with a suffocating trade embargo — and a
demand that in exchange for peace the fledgling country pay enormous reparations to its
former colonial overseer. Having won their freedom by force of arms, Haiti’s former slaves
would be made to purchase it with treasure.
The new nation, its fields burned, its plantation manors pillaged, its towns devastated by
apocalyptic war, was crushed by the burden of these astronomical reparations, payments
that, in one form or another, strangled its economy for more than a century. It was in this
dark aftermath of war, in the shadow of isolation and contempt, that Haiti’s peculiar
political system took shape, mirroring in distorted form, like a wax model placed too close to
the fire, the slave society of colonial times.
At its apex, the white colonists were supplanted by a new ruling class, made up largely of
black and mulatto officers. Though these groups soon became bitter political rivals, they
were as one in their determination to maintain in independent Haiti the cardinal principle of
governance inherited from Saint-Domingue: the brutal predatory extraction of the country’s
wealth by a chosen powerful few.
The whites on their plantations had done this directly, exploiting the land they owned with
the forced labor of their slaves. But the slaves had become soldiers in a victorious revolution,
and those who survived demanded as their reward a part of the rich land on which they had
labored and suffered. Soon after independence most of the great plantations were broken up,
given over to the former slaves, establishing Haiti as a nation of small landowners, one
whose isolated countryside remained, in language, religion and culture, largely African.
Unable to replace the whites in their plantation manors, Haiti’s new elite moved from
owning the land to fighting to control the one institution that could tax its products: the
government. While the freed slaves worked their small fields, the powerful drew off the fruits
of their labor through taxes. In this disfigured form the colonial philosophy endured: ruling
had to do not with building or developing the country but with extracting its wealth. “Pluck
the chicken,” proclaimed Dessalines — now Emperor Jacques I — “but don’t make it scream.”
In 1806, two years after independence, the emperor was bayoneted by a mostly mulatto
cabal of officers. Haitian history became the immensely complex tale of factional struggles to
control the state, with factions often defined by an intricate politics of skin color. There was
no method of succession ultimately recognized as legitimate, no tradition of loyal opposition.
Politics was murderous, operatic, improvisational. Instability alternated with autocracy. The
state was battled over and won; Haiti’s wealth, once seized, purchased allegiance — but only
for a time. Fragility of rule and uncertainty of tenure multiplied the imperative to plunder.
Unseated rulers were sometimes killed, more often exiled, but always their wealth — that
part of it not sent out of the country — was pillaged in its turn.
In 1915 the whites returned: the United States Marines disembarked to enforce continued
repayment of the original debt and to put an end to an especially violent struggle for power
that, in the shadow of World War I and German machinations in the Caribbean, suddenly
seemed to threaten American interests. During their nearly two decades of rule, the
Americans built roads and bridges, centralized the Haitian state — setting the stage for the
vast conurbation of greater Port-au-Prince that we see today in all its devastation — and sent
Haitians abroad to be educated as agronomists and doctors in the hope of building a more
stable middle class.
Still, by the time they finally left, little in the original system had fundamentally changed.
Haitian nationalism, piqued by the reappearance of white masters who had forced Haitians
to work in road gangs, produced the noiriste movement that finally brought to power in 1957
François Duvalier, the most brilliant and bloody of Haiti’s dictators, who murdered tens of
thousands while playing adroitly on cold-war America’s fear of communism to win American
acceptance.
Duvalier’s epoch, which ended with the overthrow of his son Jean-Claude in 1986, ushered
in Haiti’s latest era of instability, which has seen, in barely a quarter-century, several coups
and revolutions, a handful of elections (aborted, rigged and, occasionally, fair), a second
American occupation (whose accomplishments were even more ephemeral than the first)
and, all told, a dozen Haitian rulers. Less and less money now comes from the land, for
Haiti’s topsoil has grown enfeebled from overproduction and lack of investment. Aid from
foreigners, nations or private organizations, has largely supplanted it: under the Duvaliers
Haiti became the great petri dish of foreign aid. A handful of projects have done lasting
good; many have been self-serving and even counterproductive. All have helped make it
possible, by lifting basic burdens of governance from Haiti’s powerful, for the predatory state
to endure.
The struggle for power has not ended. Nor has Haiti’s historic proclivity for drama and
disaster. Undertaken in their wake, the world’s interventions — military and civilian, and
accompanied as often as not by a grand missionary determination to “rebuild Haiti” — have
had as their single unitary principle their failure to alter what is most basic in the country,
the reality of a corrupt state and the role, inadvertent or not, of outsiders in collaborating
with it.
The sound of Haiti’s suffering is deafening now but behind it one can hear already a familiar
music begin to play. Haiti must be made new. This kind of suffering so close to American
shores cannot be countenanced. The other evening I watched a television correspondent
shake his head over what he movingly described as a “stupid death” — a death that, but for
the right medical care, could have been prevented. “It doesn’t have to happen,” he told
viewers. “People died today who did not need to die.” He did not say what any Haitian could
have told him: that the day before, and the day before that, Haiti had seen hundreds of such
“stupid deaths,” and, over the centuries, thousands more. What has changed, once again,
and only for a time, is the light shone on them, and the volume of the voices demanding that
a “new Haiti” must now be built so they never happen again.
Whether they can read or not, Haiti’s people walk in history, and live in politics. They are
independent, proud, fiercely aware of their own singularity. What distinguishes them is a
tradition of heroism and a conviction that they are and will remain something distinct, apart
— something you can hear in the Creole spoken in the countryside, or the voodoo practiced
there, traces of the Africa that the first generation of revolutionaries brought with them on
the middle passage.
Haitians have grown up in a certain kind of struggle for individuality and for power, and the
country has proved itself able to absorb the ardent attentions of outsiders who, as often as
not, remain blissfully unaware of their own contributions to what Haiti is. Like the ruined
bridges strewn across the countryside — one of the few traces of the Marines and their
occupation nearly a century ago — these attentions tend to begin in evangelical zeal and to
leave little lasting behind.
What might, then? America could start by throwing open its markets to Haitian agricultural
produce and manufactured goods, broadening and making permanent the provisions of a
promising trade bill negotiated in 2008. Such a step would not be glamorous; it would not
“remake Haiti.” But it would require a lasting commitment by American farmers and
manufacturers and, as the country heals, it would actually bring permanent jobs, investment
and income to Haiti.
Second, the United States and other donors could make a formal undertaking to ensure that
the vast amounts that will soon pour into the country for reconstruction go not to foreigners
but to Haitians — and not only to Haitian contractors and builders but to Haitian workers, at
reasonable wages. This would put real money in the hands of many Haitians, not just a few,
and begin to shift power away from both the rapacious government and the well-meaning
and too often ineffectual charities that seek to circumvent it. The world’s greatest gift would
be to make it possible, and necessary, for Haitians — all Haitians — to rebuild Haiti.
Putting money in people’s hands will not make Haiti’s predatory state disappear. But in time,
with rising incomes and a concomitant decentralization of power, it might evolve. In coming
days much grander ambitions are sure to be declared, just as more scenes of disaster and
disorder will transfix us, more stunning and colorful images of irresistible calamity. We will
see if the present catastrophe, on a scale that dwarfs all that have come before, can do
anything truly to alter the reality of Haiti.
Mark Danner is the author, most recently, of “Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence,
War,” which chronicles political conflict in Haiti, the Balkans, Iraq and the United States.
Source: http://www.emergency-response-planning.com/Portals/87350/images/Rebuilding%20Haiti-resized-600.gif
Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/opinionator/arieff/infographicXL.jpg