General Info Haiti

Officially Named the Republique of Haiti, Haiti is a country located in Las Hispaniola island in the Caribbean. It shares the island with Dominican Republic to the west, and the rest of the island surrounded by water being Cuba and Jamaica the nearest countries.

To get a better understanding about Haiti’s situation in the XXI century, its essential to know about its history. The first habitants in the island of La Hispaniola were the Taino community. Before Christopher Columbus arriving in 1492 and naming the island La Hispaniola, the Taino’s used to called it Haiti (meaning “Land of Mountains”). After the Spanish colonization, the west part of the island became a place of high piracy and a place of sailors to settle down, this being mostly French. Due to the hard French presence in that side of the island, Spain formally ceded it to France 1697 under the treaty of Ryswick. At the time, Haiti had very fertile soils like Dominican Republic, being in both countries Sugar cane a major driver of the business. This led France to import thousands of African slaves to work on the fields. This is the main reason why Haiti is a majority black country. Later, inspired by the French Revolution in 1789, the slaves began their own process of revolution finalizing with the independence of Haiti in 1804. This was not taken well by the international community, being many powerful countries still a slave nation, like the United States and England. In 1822, they invaded the east side of the island (currently Dominican Republic), at the time under Spanish Domain. The invasion lasted 22 years, finalizing with the independence of Dominican Republic in 1844.

During the last 180 years, Haiti has faced some challenges that have left them in what today is considered, according to the Fund for Peace, in the Top 10 of the Fragile States Index of 2016. Many of this challenges were mostly economic. In 1838, The Haitian government wanted to be recognized by France, but