Interactive research atlas / snapshot 14 Nov 2026
Ayiti.
A country's mechanics, on one page.
Haiti is usually described through crisis alone. This atlas tries something harder: to show how the place actually works — who holds power and how it is financed, what the land and sea still hold, which plants people trust and which claims outrun the evidence, what things cost, and how the present was assembled out of the past. Every dataset is dated and graded. Where the numbers are contested, the disagreement is shown rather than flattened.
01 Economy
An economy that runs on remittances, imports and improvisation.
Haiti's formal economy is small, dollarised at the top and largely informal at the bottom. Apparel assembly accounts for almost all merchandise exports; food and fuel are imported; the diaspora sends more money than the country earns from trade. Read the trend lines as direction, not precision — insecurity has made the last five years unusually hard to measure.
GDP per capita, purchasing power parity
Purchasing-power terms, not cash incomes. The flat decade after 2015 is the story: output per person stopped growing before the security collapse.
Real GDP growth
Inflation
Output by sector
Services dominate, but much of that is commerce and transport rather than finance or technology.
Employment by sector
Most agricultural and service work is informal, seasonal or unpaid family labour.
Merchandise exports
Duty-free US apparel preferences under HOPE/HELP keep the export base narrow and exposed to a single market.
Trade partners
Remittances received
Remittances are the largest single source of foreign exchange and a household shock absorber.
What the numbers mean in practice
Where the formal economy actually sits
Firm-level data is thin and many of the largest employers are informal. This is a map of the visible formal economy, not a company register.
02 Society & territory
Eleven million people, no census since 2003.
Population figures are projections built on a 2003 census and a 2015 household survey. The country is divided into ten departments, 42 arrondissements and about 149 communes. The capital region holds roughly a third of the population and an even larger share of the state's revenue, which is why control of Port-au-Prince decides so much.
Population by department
Ouest alone accounts for about 4.0 million people — more than the three smallest departments combined.
Departments
Cities
Risk reflects current reported security conditions, not long-term livability. Figures are 2015 IHSI estimates; the capital's population has moved substantially since.
03 Ecosystems & wildlife
A hotspot that is also a frontline.
Hispaniola is one of the most biologically rich islands on earth, and Haiti holds the most endangered part of it. The Massif de la Hotte alone shelters dozens of amphibian species found nowhere else. Forest cover is genuinely contested — "forest" by FAO definitions is in the low single digits, while tree cover measured by satellite is around 30%. Both numbers are true; they count different things.
Pressures on ecosystems
Severity is a judgement, not a measurement. It combines the scale of the pressure with how hard it is to reverse.
Protected areas
Several protected areas exist legally but are patrolled intermittently or not at all.
Species explorer
04 Ethnobotany
The pharmacopoeia, separated from the marketing.
Haitian households rely on a deep catalogue of leaf, bark, root and fruit preparations. Some are well supported, many are plausible, and a few are actively dangerous — especially when a traditional tea becomes a concentrated "cure". Each plant below carries an evidence grade and an explicit safety note. This is cultural and scientific documentation, not medical advice.
Plant explorer
05 Politics & power
An elected republic governing without elections.
The 1987 constitution describes a semi-presidential system with a two-chamber parliament. Almost none of that machinery is running. The presidency has been vacant since July 2021, the legislature since January 2023, and the transitional council that briefly shared executive power dissolved in February 2026. What remains is a prime minister, a cabinet, decrees — and a planned election.
Recent developments
Institutions: what the law says vs. what happens
Power map
Inclusion is not endorsement. Armed-group leaders are listed because they shape outcomes, and because sanctions and arrest warrants are part of the public record.
Heads of state, 1804–present
06 Security & the armed economy
Violence is not chaos. It is a system with revenue.
Armed groups in Haiti are not a single insurgency. They are competing and occasionally allied enterprises that tax movement, extort businesses, kidnap for ransom and traffic arms and drugs. That makes them sensitive to prices, blockades and territorial boundaries — and it explains why a police advance in one neighbourhood can push violence into another.
Reported homicides
Compiled from incomplete reporting. The true toll is higher, and the series are not perfectly comparable year to year.
Displacement
Most displaced people stay with host families or in informal sites inside the same department.
Territorial control, Port-au-Prince metro
A contested, non-audited figure. It measures assessed control, not presence, and it moves with operations and deals.
Where the money comes from
Security architecture
07 History
A revolution, a debt, a dynasty, a fracture.
Most accounts of Haiti begin with 1804 and then skip to 2010. The intervening two centuries matter: the indemnity France charged for independence, the US occupation, the Duvalier dictatorship, the democratic opening and its reversals. The present crisis is the latest layer, not the whole geology.
08 Markets & material life
What a household actually has to buy.
Macro statistics hide the weekly arithmetic of a Haitian household: a marmite of rice, a sack of charcoal, a gallon of fuel, phone credit. The basket below is indicative — prices vary by city, by week and by how many checkpoints a truck had to pass. Adjust the exchange rate and the wage floor to test your own assumptions.
Household basket calculator
Quantities are per shopping trip, not per month. The "days of wages" figure compares the mid-point basket cost with one day of formal minimum-wage work — most households have several earners and most work is informal.
Strategic inventories
Haiti holds very little in reserve. A closed port or a blocked fuel terminal becomes a nationwide shortage within weeks, not months.
Property: indicative rents and sale prices
Not an index. These are ranges assembled from public listings and reporting, and they move sharply with security. Dollar leases dominate the upper market; title and construction quality are the main risks.
09 Sources & method
What this is, and what it is not.
A dated research snapshot compiled from public sources: multilateral data, UN reporting, peer-reviewed conservation assessments and Haitian journalism. Nothing here is a live feed. Where sources disagree, the atlas says so. Where a number is an estimate, it is labelled as one.