Forward by Paul Collier

Haiti may well be the only country in the Americas with a last name. References to the land of the “black Jacobins” are almost always followed by the phrase “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”. To that dubious distinction, on 12 January 2010 Haiti added another, when it was hit by the most devastating natural disaster in the Americas, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake. More than 220,000 people lost their lives and much of its vibrant capital, Portau-Prince, was reduced to rubble. Since 2004, the United Nationshas been in Haiti through MINUSTAH, in an ambitious attempt to help Haiti raise itself by its bootstraps. This effort has now acquired additional urgency. Is Haiti a failed state? Does it deserve a Marshall-plan-like programme? What will it take to address the Haitian predicament? In this book, some of the world’s leading  experts on Haiti examine the challenges faced by the first black republic, the tasks undertaken by the UN, and the new role of hemispheric players like Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as that of Canada, France and the United States.

“Nothing presently in print equals it in terms of analytical depth and breadth”

Anthony P. Maingot, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Florida International University and past president, Caribbean Studies Association

Jorge Heine is Distinguished Fellow, Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI); CIGI Chair in Global Governance, Balsillie School of International Affairs; and Professor of Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University. Andrew S. Thompson is a Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Canada, and the Programme Officer of the Global Governance Programmes at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Contributors: Paul Collier, Jorge Heine, Andrew S. Thompson, Amélie Gauthier, Madalena Moita, Robert Fatton Jr., Mirlande Manigat, Patrick Sylvain, Timothy Donais, Gerard Le Chevallier, Eduardo Aldunate, Johanna Mendelson Forman, Juan Emilio Cheyre, José Raúl Perales, Marcel Biato, Stephen Baranyi, Robert Maguire