After January 12, 2010, Haiti has never been the same.
That day, at approximately 17:00, a 7-magnitude earthquake left Port-au-Prince, the capital, reduced to rubble. Official figures speak of more than 300,000 dead, 350,000 injured and at least 1.5 million people who have lost their homes, out of a total of 2.1 million affected.
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The catastrophe further opened the wounds of one of the world’s poorest countries and made the institutional failures so deep that, 11 years after the tragedy, Haitians have not fully recovered.
An estimated 65 percent of Haiti’s metropolitan infrastructure was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.
What has changed?presidents
René Préval was in office as president when the quake disrupted all attempts to lift the economy, the goal of his two terms in power (he had a first term in 2001 and was re-elected in 2006).
However, Préval managed to end his term in 2011. He was followed by Michel Martelly, who, in 2016, relayed the Council of Ministers. The reason? The 2015 elections to elect his successor were declared invalid due to allegations of fraud against Jovenel Moïse, who won them.
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The council has only been in power for a week since Jocelerme Privert was declared interim president to try to resolve the political crisis.
In November 2016, the presidential election was repeated, with Jovenel Moïse winning, who took office in 2017.
René Préval died on March 3, 2017. During his tenure, he faced the immediate devastation of the earthquake.
Jovenel Moïse won the presidency with about 55% of the vote. He is a polarizing figure.
From July 2018, when the legislative elections were postponed indefinitely, Haiti is facing an unprecedented socio-political and economic crisis, with demonstrations, some of them violent, and repeated calls for the resignation of Moïse, involved in corruption cases.n, according to the Superior Court of Accounts.
A few months ago, Haiti’s climate of insecurity worsened, with an increase in kidnappings, robberies, murders, rapes and, above all, armed attacks on people living in slums.
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The social unrest had another episode on Thursday, January 7, when Moïse announced that the country would hold, possibly in April, a constitutional referendum, in addition to the presidential, legislative and local elections.The opposition sees the referendum as a strategy by the current president to extend his term and has called for protests by the end of January.
A seriously injured child is waiting for medical care 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 quake. Photo taken in 2020.
Economy and hunger
According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), one year after the 2010 earthquake, Haiti’s GDP fell by 7%.
Since then, the World Bank reports that “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, are still poor and 24% are in extreme poverty, ie about 2.5 million people do not have access. to basic services such as education, health, water and food.
Damn near the rubble of his house. January 2010.
Haiti is still facing extreme poverty. Photo taken in 2020.
And it is that the overwhelming subsidy policy that came into force after the earthquake meant that “today, virtually all food consumed in Haiti is imported, including products such as sugar and rice, which were produced without the need for imports (. ..) PWe can say that the international community has set out to prevent Haiti from being a successful experiment, and so far it seems that this goal has been achieved. “, Robert Fatton, a professor at the University of Virginia (in the United States) and author of several investigations into Haiti, assured “BBC World” in 2020.
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But food imports have not been able to fight hunger either. According to the NGO Action Against Hunger, “more than half of the total Haitian population suffers from chronic food insecurity (there is no food available) and 22% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition.”
Already in 2019, the United Nations estimated that 40% of Haitians would need emergency humanitarian aid this year.It is believed that Covid-19 made the reality much worse than the forecast.
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Health
Rescue a woman buried in rubble after the earthquake.
Haiti’s health system is precarious. Photo taken in 2020.
One of the main consequences of the earthquake was the annihilation of an already precarious health system, reports Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
Javier Fernández, project coordinator of this organization in Martissant, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince with high rates of violence, denounced “EFE” in 2020, that the situation “has not improved” in a decade.
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Although the isolation measures due to the pandemic, which lasted until June, affected the Haitian economy, the new virus did not cause human losses to other countries: according to the WHO, it has accumulated just over 10,000 confirmed cases and 230 deaths since the pandemic began.
The AA news agency explained in December 2020 that the reason for the very low mortality rate is unclear, but it could be due to the fact that the majority of the population is young (more than 50% of people are under the age of 23).
A ruined city: that’s what Port-au-Prince was like 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 that while no one doubts that the 2010 earthquake is the most difficult challenge the Caribbean country has faced in recent years, social, economic and political problems have been developing for decades.
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Among the events that have not yet healed in Haitian history there is the onerous debt he owed to France because it was his colony, the influence on his territory of twentieth-century American politics, and the dictatorships of François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, which lasted from 1964 to 1986. power, Fatton explains in the BBC World article.
WEATHER trends
* With information from EFE and AFP.