National landscape: The scenes at the border are horrific. What drives Haitians there is even worse

As an international aid worker, I have spent several weeks in Haiti this year, including responding to the last August earthquake. Based on what I’ve seen, I can definitively say that there is a reason why people are leaving.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with the average person earning about $100 a month. but why? The answer is the price of “freedom”. With the country’s farms and infrastructure almost destroyed in the revolution, Haiti also had to pay France reparations in exchange for diplomatic recognition: 150 million gold francs, which France later reduced to 90 million, the equivalent of roughly $20 billion today.

Haiti paid these reparations to France from 1825 to 1947, and took high-interest loans from American, German, and French banks to cover the cost. It accounts for nearly 80% of its national budget each year. This cycle of debt has put Haiti in a weak context in terms of politics and leadership and has left everyday Haitians with many financial burdens, passing on poverty from generation to generation.

It’s hard to think of Haiti without remembering the devastating 2010 earthquake that flooded the country with journalists, humanitarian workers and international aid. Despite the attention, money, and the 11 years that have passed since the earthquake, the country has yet to recover. To this day, there are people in the capital, Port-au-Prince, who sleep in tents and live in the slums that sprang up after the earthquake.

While the earthquake alone would be enough to send people packages in search of a better life, this was just the beginning of a very difficult decade for the people of Haiti. Six years after the earthquake, Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti hard in 2016, resulting in 546 deaths and $1.9 million in damages.

In 2019, extreme gang violence led to a series of nationwide lockdowns that kept people at home as gangs restricted movements through roadblocks made of tires and flaming rocks. This was a violent form of political protest by the party opposing the president, which kept people from work and children out of school for weeks.

In 2020, the global COVID-19 pandemic has begun, and while official case numbers are still relatively low in Haiti, the economic fallout – higher prices, job losses, lower imports – has left people with few redress when they were already struggling in order to achieve this. End of the interview.

All of these events are backed by years of political instability and violence that culminated in the assassination of President Jovenel Moise in July. And just when the situation seemed like it couldn’t get any worse, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the southern peninsula in August, killing more than 2,000 people and leaving more than half the region’s population in need of humanitarian assistance.

I spent a lot of my time in Haiti listening to people’s stories: about earthquakes, about the political situation, about their dreams of peace for their country. After the August earthquake, I sat on a broken mattress outside a dilapidated house and listened to the woman who lived there telling me how desperate I felt. “I have no hope, and absolutely no hope of rebuilding. I sell peanuts for a living; how can I afford to rebuild a house?”

There was a young activist who spoke about his views on the political situation. He told me, “I am sure that the key to peace in Haiti lies in the youth of this country, but we cannot have peace if we cannot work and buy food to eat.”

Then perhaps a female colleague did best when she said, “We Haitians are resilient, but I hope we don’t always have to be.”

Flexibility is not an inexhaustible resource. After everything that has happened in Haiti’s history, not to mention the past decade, it is no wonder that people in Haiti are looking elsewhere for safety and stability. As recent immigration reporting continues and debates about immigration policy heat up, it’s important to remember that no one leaves their home without a reason.

Macayla Palazzo is Policy and Advocacy Officer at Concern Worldwide US (Concernusa.org), a global humanitarian organization with offices in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

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