Haiti by the numbers, 10 years later
Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch tracks aid efforts to ensure they are oriented towards the needs of the people and that aid is not used to undermine Haitians’ right to self-determinati…
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17 January 2020
Magnitude of earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 12 2010: 7.0
Years since an earthquake of that magnitude struck Haiti: 168
Number of aftershocks, more than 4.5 magnitude, in the week after the initial tremor: 51
Total number of government ministry buildings before the earthquake: 29
Number of government ministry buildings that stood after the earthquake: 1
Number of United Nations troops and police stationed in Haiti at the time of the earthquake: 9 057
Date on which the UN voted to increase the number of troops by 4 000: 19 January 2010
Number of United States military personnel sent to Haiti or stationed on ships off Haiti’s shores by the end of January 2010: 22 200
Number of US citizens evacuated from Haiti in 2010: more than 16 000
Cost of the US military’s response to the earthquake: at least $461 000 000
Official death toll: 316 000
Estimated death toll based on survey data: 46 190 to 84 961
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Estimated value of damages and losses as a percentage of Haiti’s 2009 gross domestic product (GDP): 113%
Amount pledged by donors for short and long-term reconstruction at a March 2010 donor conference: $10.7 billion
Percent of $2.4 billion in donor-provided humanitarian assistance that went to the Haitian government from 2010 to 2012: 0.9
Billions in humanitarian and reconstruction aid disbursed by donors from 2010 to 2012: $6.4 billion
Percent of that which was disbursed directly to Haitian organisations, institutions or companies: less than 0.6%
Percent of US families that donated to earthquake relief efforts: 45%
Estimated amount of private money raised, predominantly by non-governmental organisations: $3.06 billion
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Number of homes destroyed by the earthquake: 105 000
Number of homes damaged: 208 000
Estimated number of individuals displaced by the earthquake: 1.5 million
Number of individuals evicted from camps for the internally displaced between June 2010 and March 2011: 230 000
Estimated number of individuals living in damaged or destroyed houses in 2011: 1 036 174
Internally displaced persons (IDP) camp population in December 2019: 33 000
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Population of Canaan, an area about 15km outside of the capital, at time of earthquake: 0
Population of Canaan now: at least 300 000
Amount of money raised by the American Red Cross for Haiti: $486 000 000
Number of new houses built by American Red Cross (as of June 2015): 6
Number of new houses the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) planned to build after the earthquake: 15 000
Original estimated cost of those 15 000 houses: $59 million
Number of houses USAID actually built: 900
Miles from Port-au-Prince where the original housing construction site was planned: 8 (about 13km)
Miles from Port-au-Prince where 750 of the 900 houses were actually built: 130 (about 210km)
Projected average cost of the new houses: $8 000
Final average cost of the 750 houses built in northern Haiti: $77 125
Number of those 750 houses originally built to earthquake standards: 0
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Amount spent by US taxpayers to fix structural problems with the 750 houses: $21 237 888
Date by which the two main US contractors involved in housing construction were suspended from receiving US government contracts: 25 March 2015
Amount the two suspended contractors were fined: $0
Total USAID spending for Haiti since January 2010: $2 479 512 152
Percent of that amount that went to contractors inside the Beltway (Washington, DC; Maryland; and Virginia): 54.1%
Percent of USAID spending that went directly to local Haitian companies or organisations: 2.6%
Amount disbursed to development consulting firm Chemonics International and Development Alternatives Incorporated: $473 992 419
Amount spent in 2012, on lobbying against USAID reforms, by the Coalition of International Development Companies (which includes Chemonics and development company DAI): $250 000
Amount allocated by USAID and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to support the Caracol Industrial Park, the international community’s flagship postquake project: $350 million
Date on which the industrial park was inaugurated: 22 October 2012
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Number of jobs the US Department of State promised the new industrial park would create: 65 000
Total number of jobs at the industrial park as of 2017: 10 214
Amount allocated by USAID to build a new port in support of the industrial park: $72 million
Date on which USAID abandoned its plans to support a new port in northern Haiti: May 2018
Minimum number of residents displaced by the construction of the Caracol Industrial Park: 400
Date on which those 400 residents reached an agreement with the IDB and Haitian government on corrective measures, including access to new land: 8 December 2018
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Daily minimum wage in Haitian gourdes in 1990: 15
Daily minimum wage in Haitian gourdes in 2019 (adjusted for inflation, in 1990 gourdes): 9.6
Millions of dollars in textiles exported to the US in 2009: $491 million
In 2019: $740 million
Year in which per capita GDP reached its pre-earthquake level: 2013
Average annual per capita GDP growth in the years since 2013: 0.1%
Exchange rate at time of earthquake (Haitian gourdes per US dollar): 40.5
Exchange rate today: 92
Inflation rate in 2009: 3.43
Inflation rate in 2019: 17.58
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Number of UN missions in Haiti since the earthquake: 3
Total number of years that the UN’s Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (Minustah) remained in country: 13
Number of Sri Lankan peacekeepers who abused children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007: at least 134
Number of those peacekeepers removed from Haiti: 114
Number of those peacekeepers imprisoned: 0
Number of Haitians reporting children fathered by UN troops or other personnel: 265
Minimum number of allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation at the hands of UN troops or other personnel in Haiti from 2004 to 2016: 150
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Date the first Haitian contracted cholera: 19 October 2010
Number of days it took the UN to admit responsibility for introducing cholera to Haiti: 2 129
Official number of cases registered since: 819 000
Official number of deaths: 9 789
Factor by which epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux says this underestimates the death toll: 8
Cost of the 13-year Minustah mission: $7 207 843 300
Fraction of that which donors spent in responding to the cholera outbreak: 1/10
Amount raised by the UN’s multi-donor cholera trust fund: $10 615 595
Haiti’s ranking in the UN Human Development Index in 2009: 149
In most recent update: 169
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Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2008 to 2010): 5 million
Number of Haitians undernourished (three-year average from 2016 to 2018): 5.4 million
Number of people in Haiti in need of “urgent food assistance” now: 3.7 million
Dollar amount of food imported by Haiti in 2009: $483.9 million
In 2018: $909.9 million
In 2019: $729.1 million
Dollar amount of food exported by Haiti in 2009: $28 million
In 2019: $20.7 million
Percent increase in rice consumption, 2009 to 2019: 40.7%
Percent increase in local rice production, 2009 to 2019: 13.8%
The cost in 2010 of purchasing the entire local rice crop to use as food aid: about $70 million
Tonnes (metric ton, 1 000kg) of food aid sent by USAID to Haiti in 2010: 152 960
Total cost: $161 792 300
Date on which former US president Bill Clinton apologised for undermining Haiti farmers for the benefit of rice producers in Arkansas: 10 March 2010
Local agricultural production, in tonnes, bought by the World Food Programme for food assistance programmes in Haiti in 2018: more than 700
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Children who receive school meals from the World Food Programme in Haiti today: 275 000
Percent of those meals that contain local products: 15%
Date on which Hurricane Matthew made landfall on Haiti’s Southern Peninsula: 4 October 2016
Number of years since a hurricane of similar magnitude struck Haiti: 62
Estimated percent of crops destroyed in the Grand’Anse region: 100%
Estimated percent of livestock killed in the same department: 85-90%
Estimated amount Haiti needed for reconstruction after the hurricane: $2.2 billion
Amount requested in a UN flash appeal for humanitarian funding: $139 million
Percent of flash appeal that was funded: 62.1%
Average UN humanitarian funding appeal for Haiti, 2011-2019: $200 961 058
Average percent funded: 44%
Total foreign assistance disbursed in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake, as of 2018: $11 581 637 407.32
Total amount of budget support provided by international donors: $282 503 604
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Number of Haitian presidents since 2010 earthquake: 4
Percent of the 11 181 tally sheets of electoral results that were never counted or never received after the 28 November 2010 election: 12.2%
Date on which members of the international “Core Group” threatened then president Rene Preval with forced exile: 28 November 2010
Participation rate in that election: 22.8%
Date on which a draft Organization of American States (OAS) audit of the elections, which recommended changing the results, was leaked: 10 January 2011
Date on which then secretary of state Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti to pressure the Preval government to change the results of the election: 30 January 2011
Date on which Michel Martelly, who had initially placed third and missed the runoff, was sworn in as president: 14 May 2011
Value of in-kind support that a USAID contractor provided to an organisation linked to Martelly’s campaign to clean the streets of the capital before the inauguration: $98 928
Number of elections held in Martelly’s first four years in office: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the Senate expired: 12 January 2015
Number of political parties that registered to participate in Haiti’s August 2015 legislative elections: 128
Number of candidates: 1 852
Number of seats up for grabs: 139
Percent of votes that were never counted owing to irregularities, including fraud and violence: 25%
Date on which Haiti’s first-round presidential election was held: 25 October 2015
Number of candidates participating in the 2015 presidential election: 54
Date on which the planned second-round presidential election was indefinitely called off owing to widespread irregularities: 22 January 2016
Number of untraceable votes in the 25 October 2015 election, according to an independent verification commission: 628 000
Date on which a new parliament was sworn in despite the election being cancelled at the presidential level: 11 January 2016
Participation in the 2016 rerun presidential and partial legislative election: 18%
Number of elected senators arrested and extradited to the US to face drug trafficking charges before taking office: 1
Date on which Jovenel Moïse was inaugurated president: 7 February 2017
Number of votes received by Moïse: 590 927
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Current Haitian population, estimate: 11 million
Average annual disbursement through the Venezuela-led Petrocaribe programme, 2011-2015: $270.8 million
Date on which former president Michel Martelly appointed the brother of his political party’s president to lead the agency that controls the Petrocaribe fund: 3 February 2015
Date on which Jovenel Moïse, Martelly’s chosen successor, registered as a presidential candidate: 21 May 2015
Date on which the government authorised $1 million in disbursements from its Petrocaribe account to Agritrans, a company owned by Jovenel Moïse: 26 May 2015
Minimum amount allocated to a project to build sports centres, run by former president Michel Martelly’s son: $27.7 million
Date on which Gilbert Mirambeau Jr, a Haitian filmmaker, tweeted a photo of himself, blindfolded, holding a sign asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 14 August 2018
Percent of Haiti’s 10 departments that experienced massive demonstrations on 17 October 2018 asking where the Petrocaribe money is: 90%
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Minimum number of Haitians killed by armed gangs and corrupt police on 13 November 2018 in the La Saline neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince: 70
Date of the second mass mobilisation demanding accountability for Petrocaribe corruption: 18 November 2018
Date on which Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors released its first report on Petrocaribe: 31 January 2019
Date on which the second report was released: 31 May 2019
Number of pages in the second report: 612
Number of government officials or private-sector actors imprisoned owing to Petrocaribe corruption: 0
Number of foreign mercenaries arrested outside the Haitian central bank in February 2019: 7
Days those mercenaries remained in jail before US officials intervened and facilitated their flight back to the US: 3
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Total prison population: 10 905
Fraction of prison population that is still awaiting a trial: 3/4
Number of inmates in Port-au-Prince’s “national penitentiary”: 3 626
Number the prison was built to hold: 778
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Number of Haitians killed during demonstrations since July 2018: 187
Percent who died from a bullet wound to the head: 22.5%
Minimum number of civilian massacres: 5
Estimated number of individuals killed in those massacres: 127
Number of police officers killed in 2019: 44
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Months that Haiti has not had a prime minister ratified by parliament: 10
Date on which Haiti broke longstanding diplomatic precedent and voted against Venezuela at the OAS: 10 January 2019
Date on which US President Donald Trump invited Jovenel Moïse to Mar-a-Lago to thank him for his vote: 22 March 2019
Number of US members of Congress who wrote to the state department in March 2019 pushing for human rights and corruption accountability in Haiti: 106
Number of civil society and other organisations that signed a document in late 2019 calling for Moïse’s resignation and the formation of a transitional government: 107
Number of elections held under Jovenel Moïse: 0
Date on which the terms of the entire lower house and two-thirds of the Senate expire: 13 January 2020
This article was originally published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
