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01 March 2004
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Monday
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09 Muharram 1425
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Fact-file on Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 29: Here is a fact-file on Haiti, where President Jean Bertrand Aristide resigned on Sunday following a three-week armed rebellion:
• GEOGRAPHY: Haiti shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.
• POPULATION: eight million inhabitants, 95 per cent black and five per cent mixed-race.
• CAPITAL: Port-au-Prince, with 2.3 million people.
• LANGUAGES: French and Creole.
• RELIGION: Catholicism is the majority religion. Others include Protestant Christianity and voodoo.
• HISTORY: A Spanish colony until 1697, then a French possession, Haiti became independent in 1804. Haiti had a series of monarchical and republican governments until the US invasion and occupation from 1915 to 1934.
Francois Duvalier was elected president in 1957 and became dictator in 1964. His son, Jean-Claude Duvalier succeeded his father in 1981. Duvalier fled the country on February 7, 1986, and Haiti was mostly under military rule until Aristide was elected in 1990. Aristide was deposed in a September 1991 coup but was reinstated in 1994 after a US invasion ejected the military rulers.
• POLITICS: The 1987 constitution provides for a popularly-elected president who serves a five-year term, and a bicameral legislature, which elects a prime minister.
• ECONOMY: Agriculture accounts for 42 per cent of Haiti's gross domestic product, with sugar cane, bananas, coffee and mangoes being the most important products. Other important industries include fishing, manufacturing.
Haiti's per-capita gross domestic product is 300 dollars, and some 67 per cent of the population lives in poverty, making it one of the world's poorest nations. Foreign debt amounts to 1.048 billion dollars. The unit of currency is the gourde of 100 centimes, which currently trades at 25 gourdes to the dollar.
• SOCIAL: Life expectancy is 58.4 years, and the infant mortality rate is 74 per 1,000. Only 45 per cent of the population is literate.
• ARMED FORCES: Haiti's army was dissolved in 1994, and the nation's only armed force is a 6,500-strong national police force. -AFP
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