Haiti
Country Facts
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Population – 9.8 million |
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Language - French (official), Creole (official)
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Nationality – Haitian |
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Size – 27,750 sq km |
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Capital - Port-au-Prince
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Bordering Countries - Dominican Republic
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Religion – Roman Catholic, Protestant
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Minorities – Mulatto, White
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Haitians are faced with extreme levels of poverty. The average individual earns a little over $3.50 per day and only 50% of the population is literate, making it extremely difficult to find work outside of subsistence agriculture. Two million people in the country, or over one-fifth of the population, is suffering from food insecurity.
These problems were made worse by the series of four hurricanes that hit the country between the 15th of August and the 8th of September 2008. The estimates are that over 167,000 families were affected by the hurricanes and more than 100,000 houses were either damaged or destroyed. This has been debilitating for the already existing problems of income, education, and food insecurity in the country. In previous natural disasters, other regions of the country were able to make up for the agricultural loss from a particularly hard hit area, but due to the widespread nature of these hurricanes, this was not possible. This means that the number of people experiencing food insecurity may double to almost half the population. In addition, 40,000 children are unable to attend school due to the disaster, because school openings have been delayed and schools across the country were damaged by the storms.
