Republic of Haiti

Republic of Haiti République d'Haïti Repiblik d Ayiti
Flag Coat of arms
Capital and largest city	Port-au-Prince
Official languages	French Haitian Creole
Demonym(s)	Haitian
Dominant mode of production	Capitalism
Government	Unitary semi-presidential republic
• Transitional Presidential Council	Fritz Jean (Chairman) Leslie Voltaire Edgard Leblanc Fils Laurent St Cyr Emmanuel Vertilaire Smith Augustin Louis Gérald Gilles
• Prime Minister	Alix Didier Fils-Aimé (acting)
Area
• Total	27,750 km²
Population
• 2023 estimate	11,470,261
Currency	Gourde (G) (HTG)
Calling code	+509
ISO 3166 code	HT
Internet TLD	.ht

Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country located on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, whilst the Dominican Republic controls the eastern section. Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean by area, and the largest by population. Due to French colonialism and French and Statesian neocolonialism, Haiti is an overexploited country with an average daily wage of under $5. Haiti has a starvation rate more than 50 times higher than nearby socialist Cuba.

History

Precolonial history

Before European colonization, the island that today comprises both Haiti and the Dominican Republic was mostly inhabited by the Taíno people, an Arawakan-speaking group who migrated from the Orinoco Delta in South America and gradually settled across the Caribbean. They referred to the island as Ayiti or Quisqueya, meaning "land of high mountains" or "mother of all lands".

The island of Ayiti was first colonized by the Spanish during Christopher Columbus' travels to the continent, where he forced the natives to mine gold. If they could not find enough gold, he cut their hands off. Columbus sent about 5,000 enslaved Arawaks to Europe. When the gold supply ran out, the Spanish began a system of plantation slavery. From 1492 to 1516, the Arawak population dropped from eight million to 12,000. The Spanish had completely wiped out the Arawaks in Hispaniola by 1555.

French colonialism

In 1697, Spain ceded a third of the island to the French, which created two different colonies on the island, both called Saint Dominic in their respective languages at the time.

Before the Haitian Revolution, slave traders imported up to 40,000 Africans a year to work on slave plantations in Haiti, which was then a French colony known as Saint-Domingue. The average life expectancy during this period was only 21 years and slaves had to work from dawn until late at night.

Right before the revolution in 1791, Saint-Domingue was the most profitable colony in the American continent.

Haitian Revolution

In August 1791, slaves began an uprising against their French colonial masters. It was the only successful slave revolt in the world. In 1801, Napoleon invaded Haiti in an attempt to reinstate slavery. Haiti declared independence on January 1st, 1804. Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, banned all trade with Haiti in 1806.

General Toussaint Louverture, who had been leading the revolution since 1791, was captured by the French forces in June 1802 and extradited to France where he died in exile. When he saw the French ships approaching the shores of Haiti in 1801, he wrote in a letter to his Lieutenant Jean-Jacques Dessalines:

...We have no other resource than destruction and flame. Bear in mind that the soil bathed with our sweat must not furnish our enemies with the smallest aliment. Tear up the roads with shot; throw corpses and horses into all the fountains; burn and annihilate everything, in order that those who have come to reduce us to slavery may have before their eyes the image of hell which they deserve.

After Louverture's arrest, Jean-Jacques Dessalines became the general of the rebellion and continued the war against the French. It ended in a French loss in November 1803 after the Battle of Vertières. Dessalines declared formal independence on January 1st, 1804. He renamed the country from Saint-Domingue (its colonial French name) to Haïti, from the native Taino Ayiti, and promulgated new laws such as:

1. The permanent abolition of slavery for all people in Haiti.
2. A complete ban on foreign land ownership.
3. The exclusion of all whites [settlers] from the country.
4. The confiscation of property owned by settlers.^{[citation needed]}

Dessalines was assassinated by his officers in 1806.

In 1822, President Jean Pierre Boyer briefly occupied the eastern part of the island (now the Dominican Republic) and freed the slaves there.

In 1825, French ships sailed to Haiti and demanded that they pay back former slave owners whose slaves had been freed in the revolution. From 1825 to 1857, Haiti spent an average of 19% of its revenue to pay back the debt. In 1888, France threatened to invade Haiti if it could not clear its debt. The debt was only fully paid by Haiti in 1947.

Statesian occupation

Throughout the 19th century, the U.S. Navy violated Haiti's territorial integrity at least 15 times. In 1889, the USA sent gunboats to Port-au-Prince to try to force Haiti to give it access to the port of Môle Saint-Nicholas. When Haitian officials refused, the USA harmed Haiti's economy with high tariffs.

300 U.S. Marines invaded Haiti in 1915 and occupied it until 1934. Only 16 invaders died, but they killed over 3,000 Haitians. They murdered President Theodore Guillame Sam in the streets and replaced him with a puppet president. The USA established martial law and Jim Crow policies in Haiti during the occupation.

Duvalier regime

In 1959, the CIA helped autocrat François Duvalier, also known as "Papa Doc," become the dictator of Haiti. His secret police known as the Tontons Macoutes killed 30,000 to 100,000 Haitians on top of the many routine extrajudicial killings, massacres of protestors, use of torture in prisons and unlawful detainments. In August 1959, a group of 30 Cuban and Venezuelan rebels arrived to try to overthrow Duvalier. The U.S. Navy and Marines, which were already in Haiti to train Duvalier's forces, defeated the rebels after 10 days of fighting.

After Duvalier's death, his son Jean-Claude Duvalier became the leader of Haiti in 1971 at the age of 19. In November 1985, the Haitian army killed four children in Gonaives, causing an uprising against the Duvalier regime. The US Air Force escorted Jean-Claude Duvalier from Haiti to France in February 1986 to protect him from the popular rebellion that ousted him.

Post-Duvalier period

Shortly after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the country, Henri Namphy succeeded him as President of Haiti. He took power as a military regime and continued the policies of the Duvaliers. On election day in 1987, Namphy's forces committed a massacre in which 17 died.

A series of coups followed in Haiti, with Namphy leading two of them. Namphy was eventually arrested during a coup in 1988. Leaders quickly succeeded one another until a transitional government held elections in December 1990.

Aristide presidency

Social democrat Jean-Bertrand Aristide democratically won the 1990 elections, taking office in February 1991 and marking the first time in Haiti's history that a President was democratically elected since independence in 1804. He was overthrown with CIA support only seven months into his term. In 1993, CIA-backed death squads killed scores of Aristide's supporters. Aristide was restored as president in August 1994 and demanded that France pay back $21.7 billion that was extorted from Haiti. In addition, he doubled the minimum wage and launched a campaign to collect unpaid taxes from the rich.

The United States overthrew Aristide a second time in 2004 with the support of France and Canada, and USA-backed UN troops invaded and occupied Haiti under the MINUSTAH (Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti) mission. The UN troops withdrew in 2017 after causing a cholera epidemic that killed 10,000 Haitians.

Starting in 2004, Haiti was ruled under a provisional government headed by Prime Minister Gérard Latortue who had been living in Florida prior to his appointment. His regime was supported by the United States, Canada and France.

U.S. invasion threats

After President Jovenel Moïse's assassination in 2021, the USA installed Ariel Henry as leader of Haiti. In 2022, Henry and the OAS called for another Statesian invasion of Haiti.

On September 22, 2023, prime minister Henry spoke before the UN General Assembly and reiterated his call for assistance in bolstering the national police force in Haiti, calling for the authorization of a multinational support mission consisting of both police and military personnel. On October 2, 2023, the UN Security Council authorized the creation of the non-UN Multinational Security Support mission in Haiti (MSS), under resolution 2699 (2023) which was written by the US and Ecuador. Russia and China abstained from the vote while the remaining 13 votes were in favor. Although the MSS is not a UN mission, it is often referred to as a "UN-backed" or "UN-supported" initiative.

In July of 2023, Kenya under president William Ruto had announced that it was considering leading the mission, with UN News reporting by September 2023 that Kenyan officials had visited Haiti and held talks regarding the operation.

In a February 2024 interview with BreakThrough News, professor Jemima Pierre of the University of British Colombia spoke on the rhetoric of gang violence in Haiti and its relationship to imperialist intervention and to protests and community defense. Pierre noted that although people often refer to gang violence in Haiti, "what's happening in Haiti is a bunch of paramilitary. The people who are armed are former Haitian military, former police. The guns are coming from the US and from the Dominican Republic [...] the biggest paramilitary groups are right near the US Embassy," later adding that the paramilitary groups are only attacking the masses in poor neighborhoods while not attacking banks and elite areas, "they're not attacking the banks, they're not attacking the elite areas [...] So what you see is that the elite is working together with the UN, the US, and this unelected and illegal government to keep the people down." Noting that "gang" rhetoric has helped to justify past US intervention in Haiti, Pierre also stated "the government will use the term 'gang' to any protest, they'll call them gangs". Contextualizing imagery of Haiti shown in news reporting, Pierre pointed out, "the trash in the streets—people are actually trying to block the police cars and, you know, the government cars that are terrorizing their own neighborhoods. They've actually put up, you know, sandbags, trying to block the paramilitary groups. They put the trash in the middle of the street to prevent cars from going through."

In April 2024, prime minster Henry announced his resignation from outside the country, and was replaced by a transitional council.

Entrance of multinational forces and mercenaries

Multinational Security Support mission

On June 21, 2024, the Haitian and Kenyan governments signed a status of forces agreement detailing the legal immunities and privileges of the MSS personnel, under which all MSS personnel will "enjoy immunity from jurisdiction for all acts performed in the exercise of their official functions". On June 25, 2024 the first contingent of Kenyan security forces arrived in Port-au-Prince. A 2024 article by the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that although Kenyan officers would be formally in the lead of the mission and other nations had also pledged to contribute troops, the US had "largely been in control of the mission" with the Pentagon also having flown over 90 flights to Port-au-Prince, transporting several tons of equipment and civilian contractors to Haiti and constructing facilities for the expected MSS personnel. A second contingent of 217 Kenyan police officers arrived in Haiti in January 2025. Professor Jemima Pierre described the MSS in an August 2025 interview, saying "It's not a UN mission. It's not under UN purview. And so these people can ride—they're riding around Haiti—there's no accountability for whatever actions they do in Haiti. So we're in a situation of colonial occupation, a colonial situation." As of late September 2025, the MSS forces reached 970 members with 700 troops on the ground, according to reporting by Agencia EFE.

Erik Prince and Vectus Global

By August 2025, it had been reported that Erik Prince, founder of the private military contractor Blackwater which is associated with war crimes such as the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Iraq, has reached an agreement with Haiti's interim government for his company Vectus Global operate in Haiti for a period of 10 years, which includes deploying mercenaries, operating armed drones, and implementing a tax-collection system. Prince had previously been involved in Haiti in the 1990s when he was an officer of the US Navy SEALs. Recalling that period on his podcast in a 2024 episode titled "Haiti is 'The Purge' IRL" Prince referred to former president Aristide as a "super leftist Marxist" and said that the US mission at the time was "to change the regime from one corrupt regime to another corrupt regime" and remarked that "the country would be better off being run by the United Fruit Company or Dole Pineapple". Speaking in the same episode on more recent events, Prince repeatedly referred to what he characterized as the "invasion" of the US by refugees from Haiti and other countries, saying "we should care because we don't need 11 million Haitians getting in boats coming to Miami". Prince has also stated that the US should "put the imperial hat back on" and govern countries which he regards as "incapable" of governing themselves (which he said includes "pretty much all of Africa") because "we're done being invaded".

Gang Suppression Force

On September 30, 2025, the UN Security Council authorized a multinational "Gang Suppression Force" (GSF) to replace the MSS, whose mandate was set to expire October 2. The resolution was co-written by the US and Panama, and was adopted by a vote of 12 in favor, with three abstentions by China, Pakistan, and Russia, and no votes against. The GSF is planned to consist of up to 5,500 police or military personnel and 50 civilian staff with an initial 12-month mandate, and it is expected to retain Kenyan police forces from the MSS as well as receive reinforcement from Central American and Caribbean nations. US Ambassador Mike Waltz emphasized the scale of the GSF in comparison to the MSS, describing it as "a mission five times the size of its predecessor and with a strengthened mandate to go after the gangs." Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia described the resolution as having a "virtually unrestricted mandate to use force against anyone and everyone labelled with the vague term ‘gangs'."