Haiti Economy, Inequalily of Wealth, and Government

Introduction

The independent Republic of Haiti was born out of a 12-year revolutionary struggle for freedom from slavery, and against the colonial ambitions of France, Spain and the United Kingdom. The final victory for the revolutionaries came in late 1803 when the united black and mulatto forces defeated the French army, and the new republic was declared on 1 January 1804. Although the 1791-1804 revolution brought an end to slavery and made both blacks and mulattoes free and theoretically equal, racial, social and economic divisions deriving from the colonial regime exerted strong influences on the shaping of post-independence society (Chin, 2004, pp. 12-43).

Once, Haiti was the richest country in the world. Haiti is now considered a developed country is a third-world country, and the poorest in the western hemisphere and it are rank at 145 out of 169 countries in the latest 2010 UN Human development index. The situation in Haiti is very complex and to understand the country current situation, one has to understand the root causes of the problem. While some are very palpable, but others are not: The political unrest, lack of education, over populated, disease, and women rights. All would affect the economics of a country and could create an economic inequality among gender.

Economy

Agriculture

Products are coffee, mangoes, sugarcane, rice, corn, sorghum; wood. The agricultural sector was negatively affected by the damage and losses resulting from the tropical storms and hurricanes that battered the country in August and September 2008, registering a decline in real terms of 6% compared with 2007/08. The Government, NGOs and the staff of internationally funded projects carried out a joint evaluation of the extent of the damage to the country's agricultural sector, and estimated total losses at US $229m. The central department of Antimonite was the worst affected, with the agricultural sector losses totaling $95m (Chin, 2004, pp. 12-43).

The Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development estimated that “4,178 ha” of farm land were washed away when rivers burst their banks during the storms. According to the national food security platform, the Coordination National Security Alimentary (CNSA), the damage to the 2008 winter season harvest of beans, maize, sorghum and root crops made access to food even more difficult to the first half of 2009. However, abundant rains during the rest of the year brought good harvests, and the sector registered a slight recovery in 2008/09. By the end of 2009, the CNSA estimated that the proportion of the population existing in a condition of food insecurity remained steady at around one-third, amounting to approximately 3.3m people.

Manufacturing

The manufacturing sector has been in decline since it peaked in the early 1980s. However, workers in Port-au-Prince are on extremely low wages to assemble pajamas and T-shirts for the North American market (Chomsky, 2004, pp. 98-124). Manufacturing for domestic consumption, consisting mainly of foodstuffs and beverages, is limited. High-poverty rates and the preference of the wealthy elite for imported goods mean that the domestic market is very small ...