Haiti earthquake: 11 years of the earthquake that reduced the country to rubble – Latin America – International

The Council only lasted one week in power, as Jocelerme Privert was declared interim president to try to end the political crisis.

In November 2016, the presidential election was repeated again with Jovenel Moïse as the winner, who took office in 2017.

René Préval died on March 3, 2017. During his tenure, he faced the immediate devastation of an earthquake.

Jovenel Moïse won the presidency with approximately 55% of the vote. He is a polarizing figure.

Since July 2018, when the legislative elections were postponed indefinitely, Haiti faces an unprecedented socio-political and economic crisis, with demonstrations, some of them violent, and repeated calls for the resignation of Moses, involved in corruption casesn, according to the High Court of Auditors.

Several months ago, the climate of insecurity in Haiti increased, with an increase in kidnappings, robberies, murders, rapes and, most importantly, armed attacks on people living in low-income neighborhoods.

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Social discontent had another episode last Thursday, January 7, when Moses announced that the country would hold, possibly in April, a constitutional referendum, in addition to presidential, legislative and local elections.The opposition believes the referendum is a strategy by the current president to extend his term and called for protests by the end of January.

A seriously injured child is awaiting medical attention after the quake.

Two children play in front of the ruins of a building, while an amputee takes care of them. Hundreds of people lost their limbs in the quake. Photograph 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%.

Since that date the World Bank reports that “Haiti’s economic growth has been weak, with an average GDP of only 1.3% between 2015 and 2018.”

This same institution estimated, in January 2020, that 6% of the Haitian population, or 6.3 million people, remain poor and 24% are in extreme poverty, ie approximately 2, 5 million people do not have access to basic services such as education, health, water and food.

Damaged on the side of the house rubble. January 2010.

Haiti still struggles with extreme poverty. Photograph taken in 2020.

And it is that the overflowing subsidy policy that gained strength after the earthquake meant that “today, practically all the food consumed in Haiti is imported, even products such as sugar and rice, which were produced without need for imports (. ..) PWe are afraid to say that the international community set out to make Haiti impossible a successful experiment and so far it seems that this goal has been achieved. “, Assured him in 2020 to the ‘BBC World’ Robert Fatton, a professor at the University of Virginia (in the United States) and author of several researches on Haiti.

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But food imports have also failed to fight hunger. According to the NGO Action Against Hunger, “more than half of the total Haitian population suffers from chronic food insecurity (no food available) and 22% of children suffer from chronic malnutrition.”

As early as 2019, the United Nations had estimated that 40% of Haitians would be in need of emergency humanitarian aid this year.It is believed that the covid-19 may have made reality much worse than the forecast.

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health

Rescue of a woman buried in the rubble after the earthquake.

The health system in Haiti is precarious. Photograph taken in 2020.

One of the main consequences of the earthquake was to annihilate a health system that was already precarious in itself, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

Javier Fernández, project coordinator of this organization in Martissant, a neighborhood of Port-au-Prince with high rates of violence, reported to ‘EFE’, in 2020, that the situation “has not improved” in a decade.

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Although the pandemic containment measures, which lasted until June, did have an effect on Haiti’s economy, the new virus has not caused the loss of life in other countries: according to the WHO, it has only accumulated more than 10,000 confirmed cases and 230 deaths since the pandemic began.

The news agency ‘AA’ explained in December 2020 that the reason for the very low mortality rate is unclear. but it could be because most of the population is young (more than 50% of people are under 23).

A ruined city: this is what Port-au-Prince was like after the earthquake.

Despite the difficulties in Port-the visual traces of earthquake are less and less. Of course: those in poverty remain intact.

The truth is that while no one doubts that the 2010 earthquake is the most difficult challenge the Caribbean country has experienced in recent years, social, economic and political problems have been forging for decades.

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Among the facts that do not yet heal in Haitian history is the onerous debt it had with France for being its colony, the influence in its territory of American politics during the twentieth century and the dictatorships of François Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude, which lasted from 1964 to 1986 in power, explains Fatton in the ‘BBC World’ article.