Profil d’Haiti – Projet Haiti Vision

Profile of Haiti

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Haiti is a country in the Caribbean. It occupies the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola; the Dominican Republic occupies the eastern two thirds. Haiti has two main peninsulas, one to the north and one to the south. Between the peninsulas is the island of Gonâve. Haiti has an area of 27,750 square kilometers. The capital is Port-au-Prince, a city of 3 million inhabitants. Haiti has a population of 11.75 million. 95% of the population are blacks of African descent. The remaining 4.5% are made up of mulattos descendants of black female slaves and white settlers, and 0.5% of whites of foreign origin mostly Syrian-Lebanese. The main religion is voodoo at around 70% and then Christianity of the following denominations, Catholic, Baptist, Adventist and more recently Pentecostal.

Haiti is the world's first independent black republic. Independence was obtained on January 1, 1804 after 14 years of Haitian revolution, a bloody struggle against France during which nearly 20% to 30% of the 500,000 slaves were killed.

Haiti is separated from Cuba to the northwest by the Canal du Vent, a strip of water about ninety kilometers wide. The eastern border of the country borders the Dominican Republic. A series of treaties and protocols - the most recent of which was the 1936 Revision Protocol, defines the 388-kilometer eastern border, which is formed in part by the Pedernales River to the south and the Massacre River to the north.

One of Haiti's two official languages is French, which is the main written language. It is spoken in many schools and in some authorized administrative offices. It is spoken by educated Haitians and is used in the business sector. The second is the recently standardized Haitian Creole, which is spoken by virtually the entire Haitian population and is currently used in all spheres of national life.

Haitian Creole is one of the Creole languages based on French, it is strongly linked to French with an infusion of a few Spanish and English words (Daiva: bon nageur => de Diver; Tchul: elegant => de Chulo [Spanish] ).

The territory of Haiti comprises three regions: the northern region, which includes the northern peninsula; the central region; and the southern region, which includes the southern peninsula. In addition, Haiti has several neighboring islands. Haiti is divided into administrative regions called departments. It has 10 departments; Artibonite, Center, Grand'Anse, Nippes, North, North-East, North-West, West, South, South-East. Historically, until the 1960s, it only had 5 departments; Artibonite (including Center), North (including North-East), North-West, West (including South-East), South (including Grand'Anse).

Haiti has a bicameral National Assembly composed of the Senate (30 seats; members elected by your people for a six-year term; one-third elected every two years) and the Chamber of Deputies (119 seats; members are elected by popular vote for a four-year term). Note - when the Senate is reestablished, the candidate in each department that received the most votes in the last election serves a six-year term, the candidate with the second most votes serves four years, and the candidate with the third more than votes serves two years. The current constitution was approved in March 1987 and amended in 2012.

Haiti is a land of great cultural production. From music to the arts, the country has produced many great artists such as world famous rapper Wyclef Jean; the musician Régine Chassagne, co-founder of the world-renowned Canadian rock group Arcade Fire; the singers Emeline Michel, Ansi Derose, Sara Rénélik, Luc Mervil; the writers Frank Etienne, Frank Romain, René Dépestre, Danny Laferrière, member of the Académie Française, Edwidge Danticat; the artists Anthony Kavanah, Jean-Jean Pierre; guitarists Dadout Pasquet, Robert Martino; the string jazz group, etc. ; the painters Jérome Polycarpe, Frantz Matthieu, Claude Dambreville, Fernand Pierre, Jean Louis Louisius, Joel Gauthier, etc.

Haiti is globally recognized for its distinctive art, especially painting and sculpture. Numerous groups of artists in painting "schools", such as the Cap-Haitien school, specializing above all in representations of daily life in the city, from the Jacmel school, which reflects the steep mountains and the bays. from this coastal town, or from the Cité-Soleil school, which is characterized by abstract human forms and is strongly influenced by Voodoo symbolism. In 1947, André Breton included Haitian paintings in his famous book "Surrealism and Painting". Other critics and writers compared Haitian artists to Gaugin and Rousseau.

Carnival or Mardi-Gras is the biggest celebration in Haiti and is held in February. It is a great part of Haitian culture that dates back to the days of slavery. Especially in Port-au-Prince, the Carnival parade which crosses the Champ-de-Mars park, attracts each year nearly 800,000 people who come together for a big three-day party to close the month of the long season of Carnival. In terms of size and audience participation, it is probably second in the world and is second only to the great Rio Carnival of Brazil. All layers of society participate in this unique national holiday. Since 2012, we brought the concept of a national carnival funded by the central government and which is held in rotation until now in the 5 largest cities of the country including the capital.

Haitian cuisine comes from several culinary styles of the different ethnic groups that populated the land, namely the French, Africans and a few Taíno Amerindians. One popular food is the weighed banana (ban-nan'n pezé), flattened slices of plantain fried in vegetable oil (called tostones in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico). It is eaten both as a snack and as part of a meal, often with tassot or griot, which are deep fried goat and pork, respectively.

Football is the most popular sport in Haiti. In addition to the first division league in which clubs from the big cities play, hundreds of small football teams compete at the local level. Haiti participated in the 1974 World Cup and lost by a score of two to one against Italy. Emmanuel Sannon scored the game's first goal to make it the first goal scored by a small third world nation against a former world champion and European champion.

Millions of Haitians live abroad, mainly in America: in the Dominican Republic, in the United States, in Cuba, in Canada (mainly in Montreal) and in the Bahamas. They also live in other countries such as France, the French Antilles, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Venezuela and French Guyana. There are an estimated 600,000 Haitians living in the United States, 100,000 in Canada, and anywhere between 500,000 and 800,000 in the Dominican Republic. The Haitian community in France reaches around 80,000 people and up to 80,000 Haitians now also live in the Bahamas. Here are the names of some important Haitian businessmen in the Diaspora: the late Thomas Désulmé the famous founder of Thermo-Plastics Jamaica Ltd. Jamaica's largest plastic products company; Dumarsais Siméus former president of TLC Beatrice Foods, owner of the agro-industrial company Simeus Food International Inc. in the United States (personal fortune estimated at $100 million US).

In the Dominican Republic racism against blacks in general and Haitians in particular, is endemic. A UN envoy in October 2007 confirmed this reality. The hatred of Haitians stems in part from the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic for 20 years in the 1830s and especially from the fear of the Dominican people who think that the potential mixture with Haitians poses a threat to their Hispanic ethnic heritage (mainly the color of light skin) which they oppose in their minds to the African roots which they have rejected.

This superiority complex is exacerbated by the great poverty that exists in Haiti. Note that under the reign of the Dominican dictator Trujillo in the 1930s from 20,000 to 30,000 Haitians were massacred along the northern border. This action to cleanse the territory of the Dominican border from Haitians is in reality a declaration of disguised war, to which the Haitian nation could not respond being too weak at all levels. Part of the hope of the Dominican leadership at the time was to have the opportunity through official war to occupy Haiti as a historic response to the previous Haitian occupation of their country.

The book by former Dominican President Joachim Balaguer (a white Dominican) “La Isla al revès” published in 1984 is quite revealing in this regard. His thesis on the Haitian threat against the Dominican Republic is long and clearly resonates with the vast majority of the population. Anti-Haitian social sentiment was strong in DR in reaction to the book. Relations have recently improved between the two countries as the Dominican Republic takes full advantage of the captive Haitian market for agricultural and manufactured products.

Haiti's GDP per capita (purchasing power parity) is 1,300 $ (2009 estimate) ranked 203rd in the world. It has not changed since 2007. Haiti's economic stagnation is the result of inappropriate economic policies, political instability, corruption, a shortage of good arable land, environmental degradation, the continued use of traditional agricultural technologies, under-capitalization and lack of public investment in human resources, the migration of large parts of the skilled population and a low national savings rate.

The 2009 HDI (Human Development Index) ranking is slightly better at the 149th place. However, it is significantly lower than Nicaragua, which occupies before Haiti the penultimate place in the group of the American continent, but which is still ranked 124th in the world.

Profile of Haiti

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