Humanitarian crisis in Haiti as the Caribbean’s most populous country may have fallen to armed gangs

Humanitarian crisis in Haiti as the Caribbean’s most populous country may have fallen to armed gangs

Subject: IR

Section: Places in news

Context:

• Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country and the Caribbean’s most populous nation may have been overtaken by criminal gangs, leading to the evacuation of US embassy staff from Port-au-Prince by the United States Marine Corps, as reported by the Miami Herald.

Details:

• Haitians can’t lead a decent life, and live in fear, and the capital is essentially under siege by armed groups.
• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that the world was ‘running out of time’ to act on Haiti’s crisis.
• Armed gangs, growing stronger since the 2010 earthquake, launched an offensive on February 29 to overthrow Prime Minister Ariel Henry’s government, targeting hospitals, prisons, and transportation hubs.

A country in turmoil- Haiti:

• Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea with the Dominican Republic.
• Named Ayiti by its Taino natives, Haiti was the site of Columbus’s first settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, founded in 1492.
• Formerly a French colony known as Saint-Domingue,Haiti became Latin America and the Caribbean’s first independent country, the world’s first free black republic, and the second republic in the Western Hemisphere after the US, following the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) led by Toussaint Louverture.
• Post-independence, Haiti was forced to pay France 150 million francs as “reparations to French slaveholders,” a debt cleared over 122 years.
• The 20th century saw a 19-year US occupation and political interference, including support for the Duvalier Dynasty and the ousting of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
• Since the devastating 2010 earthquake,Haiti has struggled with political instability and leadership issues, with successive leaders using armed gangs as private militias, which have now become powerful and uncontrollable.
• In 2021, President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated, and his successor, Ariel Henry, faced threats of overthrow.
• The ongoing unrest has led to the internal displacement of 362,000 Haitians, over half of whom are children, with more than 160,000 people displaced in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area alone, as reported by the International Organization for Migration.

Source: DTE