Haiti is not only the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, it is also the least educated. Roughly half the population is illiterate. Only two-thirds of children who begin primary school complete it.
Even before a massive earthquake transformed much of the capital city of Port-au-Prince into rubble, Haitians were already bound together by the shared trauma of collective memory.
Haiti represents one of the most complex and deeply rooted challenges facing U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere: a failing state on the doorstep of the world’s most powerful nation.
Since achieving independence in 1804 to become the world’s first free black state, Haiti has been beset by turbulent, often violent, politics and a gradual but seemingly unstoppable slide from austerity to poverty to misery.
