The Periscope Post

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with eight out of 10 citizens living below the poverty line, and half the population living in abject poverty. A disaster of the magnitude of Tuesday’s earthquake would cripple a wealthier nation, but in Haiti, experts say, it becomes far worse.

French-speaking Haiti is one-third of the island of Hispaniola, and is roughly the size of the American state of Maryland. For most of its history as an independent nation, Haiti has been wracked by violent political struggle. In 2004, an armed rebellion forced then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide into resignation and exile and an interim government, run by the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti, took over. After more violence, Haiti finally elected a president and parliament in May of 2006.

Read more about Haiti on the CIA’s World Factbook.

Aside from the ever-present threat of natural disasters, including hurricanes and periodic droughts, Haiti has suffered disproportionately from the AIDS epidemic, and continues to see high rates of infection of illnesses like hepatitis A and E, typhoid fever, and malaria. Only around 50 percent of the population is literate and unemployment is astoundingly widespread; high inflation and a chronic lack of investment mean that financially, Haiti relies heavily on foreign handouts to survive.

In the last four years, Haiti was enjoying some positive development, despite the devastation caused by hurricanes in 2008, wrote TIME magazine today. “We were hearing more positive things from Haiti for once,” Danielle Romer, a Miami social worker with family in Haiti, told the magazine. “Things were coming around.”

Two million of Haiti’s 9 million people lived in capital city, Port-au-Prince; thousands are feared dead after the 7.0 quake reduced the city’s flimsy buildings and budding infrastructure to rubble.

The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, through which the country maintained earthquake insurance, said it would pay out $8 million to Haiti based on preliminary data of the location and strength of the earthquake, Reuters reported today. But even with insurance and the promise of long-term aid from wealthier nations, experts say it could take years, possibly even decades, for Haiti to dig out from this disaster.