Haiti
is among the world’s poorest, least stable countries, beset by extreme unemployment, near-total deforestation, disease and chronic political unrest. After 
Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced into exile a year ago, an interim government and United Nations peacekeepers sought to stabilize the little Caribbean nation just 650 miles from Florida. Soon afterward, a full-fledged U.N. relief effort was launched. But Haiti remains torn by violence and dangerously unstable. Parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled to be held later this year, but some political observers say Haiti is a failed state that requires nothing short of a total U.N. takeover. Others blame the United States for causing many of Haiti’s problems and not doing more to help it recover. Meanwhile, human rights advocates say the Bush administration’s policy of allowing fleeing Cubans into the U.S. while excluding most Haitians is blatantly unfair.
Overview
At age 81, the Rev. Joseph Dantica was an unlikely target for gang vengeance. But during a gun battle with a street gang last October, Haitian police commandeered the roof of his Port-au-Prince church, with lethal results. The next day, surviving gang members threatened to kill the Protestant minister if he didn’t pay for their comrades’ funerals. 
Luckily, Dantica had a visa allowing him into the United States, and he fled to Miami, where he requested political asylum. In response, airport Immigration officials jailed him at the notorious Krome Detention Center, where, his family said, guards took away his medication for high blood pressure and a prostate infection. Days later, he was granted a hearing, but he collapsed before it could begin. He died that night. 
Human rights advocates and international aid organizations say Dantica’s death symbolizes not only the inhumane treatment of individual Haitian asylum seekers but also the disinterest of the United States and other nations toward Haiti’s desperate plight.
“The United States caused Haiti to unravel at a faster pace but refuses to get its hands dirty by reconstructing the country and making it more stable,” says Jocelyn (Johnny) McCalla, executive director of the New York-based National Coalition for Haitian Rights. “Dantica should have been welcomed with open arms. Instead, he was treated like a criminal.”
Haiti is among the world’s poorest, least stable countries, chronically beset by extreme unemployment, environmental degradation, disease and political unrest. Indeed, the tiny nation’s self-destructive politics led to the gun battle at Dantica’s doorstep in one of the city’s poorest areas.
Port-au-Prince’s slums are filled with armed men who claim allegiance to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the controversial Catholic priest who was in his second term as president of Haiti when, on Feb. 29, 2004, he was flown out of the country on a U.S.-chartered jet. Opposition to his administration had turned into an armed revolt, and the United States urged him to quit — or, in Aristide’s version, forced him out. 
A transitional government run by appointee Gérard Latortue, a former U.N. official, then took control, backed by a U.N. peacekeeping mission that included some 1,500 U.S. Marines. In June 2004, it evolved into a full-fledged relief effort, the U.N. Stabilization Mission for Haiti. Its ambitious aim is nothing less than disarming Haiti’s gunmen — many of them children — and launching a series of anti-poverty programs.
But past rescue missions have come and gone. As U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said when the U.N. mission commenced, “Here we are again.” 
In fact, some political observers say Haiti is a failed state that can only be saved by a total U.N. takeover. Others blame the United States and other nations for ignoring the problem at their doorstep. Indeed, some warn that Haiti’s problems are the United States’ problems — serious problems — because Haiti is a breeding ground for AIDS and other diseases, a major drug-smuggling hub and a never-ending source of asylum seekers.
But administration officials and others say much has been done — and is being done to help, including providing massive development aid.
One thing is certain: Life for most Haitians — who share the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic — is a daily struggle to survive. Open sewers run through many slum streets in Port-au-Prince, the capital, and there is neither clean water nor reliable garbage collection. More than half the country’s 8.4 million people live on less than $1 a day. Haitians have the world’s lowest caloric intake, along with people in Somalia and Afghanistan, and skilled health personnel attend only one in four births. 
To make matters worse, destitute Haitians have cut down most of the country’s trees to plant crops or make charcoal, leaving the country defenseless against flooding, which last year killed nearly 4,000 people. 
