Haiti

Haiti began as the world's most profitable colony and became its most tragic cautionary tale about extraction without investment. Saint-Domingue produced 40% of Europe's sugar and 60% of its coffee by 1789, generating wealth that built French palaces while enslaved Africans died faster than they could be replaced. Then came 1791: the only successful slave revolution in history, led by Toussaint Louverture, that created the first Black republic in 1804.

France demanded 150 million francs (later reduced to 90 million) as "compensation" for lost "property"—meaning the enslaved humans who had freed themselves. Haiti paid this debt until 1947, transferring an estimated $21 billion in today's dollars to French banks. The United States refused recognition until 1862 and occupied the country from 1915 to 1934. The Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986) looted whatever remained.

Geography compounds history's cruelty. Haiti occupies the western third of Hispaniola, an island bisected by a mountain range that blocks Atlantic moisture from reaching the Dominican side. Hurricanes strike repeatedly; the 2010 earthquake killed over 200,000 and destroyed the capital. Deforestation has stripped 98% of forest cover, accelerating erosion that degrades the agricultural base.

The economy that survives reflects these accumulated traumas. GDP has contracted for six consecutive years, falling 4.2% in 2024 and 3.1% in 2025. Inflation exceeds 25%. The share of Haitians living on less than $3 per day rose from 42.2% in 2021 to 48.7% by 2025. Remittances—approximately 20% of GDP—provide the primary external lifeline, sent by diaspora communities in the United States, Canada, and France.

Gangs now control nearly 90% of Port-au-Prince. After President Jovenel Moïse's assassination in July 2021, gang proliferation accelerated to over 250 groups by 2025. These organizations earn revenue through kidnapping, extortion, and port blockades that strangle commerce and fuel inflation. The country has entered its fourth year without a president and ninth year without presidential elections. No democratically elected officials hold office; the justice system has effectively collapsed.

Severe food insecurity affects 5.7 million people. Over one million are internally displaced—more than half of them children. The humanitarian infrastructure struggles to function when supply routes pass through gang-controlled territories.

International interventions have failed repeatedly. A UN peacekeeping mission from 2004 to 2017 introduced cholera that killed over 10,000 Haitians. The Kenyan-led multinational force authorized in 2024 arrived slowly and without adequate resources. No external intervention has addressed the structural conditions that make Haiti ungovernable: extractive colonial legacies, environmental degradation, institutional destruction, and an international community that offers crisis response but not sustained development investment.

By 2026, Haiti will likely remain trapped in its cycle: each crisis deepening the next, each international response treating symptoms while root causes compound. The first free Black republic became the hemisphere's poorest nation—not despite its revolutionary origins, but partly because of how the world punished that revolution for two centuries.