After January 12, 2010, Haiti was never the same.
That day around 5:00 PM, a 7 on the Richter scale earthquake left Port-au-Prince, the capital, to rubble. Official figures indicate more than 300,000 dead, 350,000 injured and at least 1.5 million people lost their homes, out of a total of 2.1 million victims.
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The catastrophe further opened the wounds of one of the world’s poorest countries and caused apparent institutional failures so profound that Haitians have not fully recovered 11 years after the tragedy.
An estimated 65 percent of Haiti’s metropolitan infrastructure was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.
What has changed?The Presidents
René Préval was reigning as president when the earthquake struck, which completed all his efforts to boost the economy completed the goal of his two terms in office (he had a first term in 2001 and was reelected in 2006).
In any case, Préval managed to complete his term in 2011. He was succeeded by Michel Martelly, who handed over the baton to the Council of Ministers in 2016. The reason? The 2015 elections to elect his successor were declared invalid on allegations of fraud against Jovenel Moïse, which she had won.
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The Council stayed in power for only a week as Jocelerme Privert was named interim president to try to resolve the political crisis.
In November 2016, the presidential elections were repeated with Jovenel Moïse as the winner, who took office in 2017.
René Préval died on March 3, 2017. During his tenure, he was confronted with the immediate devastation of the earthquake.
Jovenel Moïse won the presidency with about 55% of the vote. He is a polarizing figure.
Since July 2018, when the parliamentary elections were postponed indefinitely, Haiti is facing an unprecedented socio-political and economic crisis, with demonstrations, some of which are violent, and repeated calls for the resignation of Moïse, who has been implicated in cases of corruption.n, according to the Superior Court of Accounts.
A few months ago, the climate of insecurity in Haiti deteriorated, with an increase in kidnappings, robberies, murders, rapes and especially armed attacks on people living in poor neighborhoods.
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The social unrest had another episode last Thursday, January 7, when Moïse announced that the country will hold a constitutional referendum, possibly in April, in addition to presidential, parliamentary and local elections.The opposition believes the referendum is a strategy of the current president to extend his mandate and called for protests by the end of January.
A seriously injured child is waiting for medical attention after the earthquake.
Two children play in front of the ruins of a building, while being cared for by an amputee. Hundreds of people lost their limbs in the earthquake. Photo taken in 2020.
The economy and hunger
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), a year after the 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s GDP fell by 7%.
The World Bank has been reporting this since that date “Haiti’s economic growth has been weak, with an average GDP of only 1.3% between 2015 and 2018.”
The same institution estimated in January 2020 that 6% of the Haitian population, or 6.3 million people, is still poor and 24% is in extreme poverty, that is, about 2.5 million people. people do not have access to basic services such as education, health, water and food.
Cursed next to the rubble of his house. January 2010.
Haiti continues to suffer from extreme poverty. Photo taken in 2020.
And the fact is that the overwhelming subsidy policies that took effect after the earthquake meant that “today practically all the food consumed in Haiti is imported, including products such as sugar and rice, which were produced without the need for import.” .) P.We can say that the international community tried to prevent Haiti from becoming a successful experiment and so far it appears that this goal has been achieved “Robert Fatton, a professor at the University of Virginia (in the United States) and author of several studies on Haiti, assured the BBC World in 2020.
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But food imports have not been able to combat hunger either. According to the NGO Action Against Hunger, “More than half of the total Haitian population suffers from chronic food insecurity (no food is available) and 22% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition.”
As early as 2019, the United Nations had calculated that 40% of Haitians would need emergency aid this year.Covid-19 would have made reality much worse than prediction.
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Health
Rescue of a woman buried in the rubble after the earthquake.
The health system in Haiti is precarious. Photo taken in 2020.
One of the main consequences of the earthquake was the destruction of a health system that was already insecure, MSF reports.
Javier Fernández, project coordinator of this organization in Martissant, a district of Port-au-Prince with a lot of violence, denounced ‘EFE’ in 2020, that the situation “has not improved” in ten years.
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While the detention measures resulting from the pandemic, which lasted until June, did affect Haiti’s economy, the new virus has not caused the human losses other countries have suffered: according to the WHO, it has only counted more than 10,000 confirmed cases and 230 deaths since the start of the pandemic.
The news agency ‘AA’ explained in December 2020 that the reason for the very low death rate is not clear, but it may be that most of the population is young (more than 50% of people are under 23 years old).
A city in ruins: that’s how Port-au-Prince was after the earthquake.
Despite the difficulties in Port-au-Prince, the visual traces of the earthquake are less and less. Of course: those of poverty are still intact.
The truth is, while no one has any doubts that the 2010 earthquake is the toughest challenge the Caribbean country has faced in recent years, social, economic and political troubles had been ongoing for decades.
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One of the unhealed events in Haiti’s history there is the heavy debt it owed to France for being its colony, the influence on its territory of American politics during the 20th century and the dictatorships of François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, who were at the were power, Fatton explains in the article ‘BBC World’.
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* With information from EFE and AFP.