HAITI: Haiti, a Caribbean nation of about 8.5 million people that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, is a former French colony and the world's oldest black republic.
Founded by freed slaves, led by Toussaint L'Ouverture, following a revolt that led to independence on January 1st, 1804, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas, with annual per capita income of around $400.
Its first freely elected leader, the radical former Roman Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was ousted from office in each of his two presidential terms, first in 1991 and then again in 2004.
With 80 per cent of its people in poverty, the country has been virtually stripped of trees, which are cut down for charcoal. Less than 2 per cent of the forest cover remains, leaving a nation of subsistence farmers vulnerable to erosion, floods and mudslides.
Although 80 per cent of Haitians are Catholic and 16 per cent Protestant, more than half the people are believed to practice voodoo, the Afro-Caribbean religion whose roots may go back 6,000 years or more in Africa. - (Reuters)