Short answers, pulled from the story.
Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country in the Caribbean on the island of Hispaniola, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, east of Cuba and Jamaica and south of The Bahamas. With an estimated population of 11.4 million, it is the most populous Caribbean country, and its capital is Port-au-Prince.
Haiti is the only country in history established by a slave revolt. The 1791 to 1804 Haitian Revolution made it the first sovereign state in the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americas, and the first country in the Americas to officially abolish slavery.
Haiti declared its independence from France on the 1st of January 1804, in the town of Gonaives. Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the new nation under the Indigenous Taino name Haiti, which means land of high mountains.
In 1825, under a treaty with King Charles the Tenth, Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs in exchange for recognition of its independence, an amount put at about $560 million in today's dollars. The reparations were later reduced to $90 million in 1838, and Haiti did not finish repaying the debt until 1947.
Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected president in 1957 and ruled until his death in 1971, creating a private militia called the Tontons Macoutes. His son Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as Baby Doc, ruled from 1971 until 1986. Roughly 40,000 to 60,000 Haitians are estimated to have been killed during their reign.
Haiti's crisis deepened after the 2010 earthquake and a cholera outbreak, then worsened with the assassination of President Jovenel Moise on the 7th of July 2021 and an escalating gang war. By late 2023, gangs controlled an estimated 80% of Port-au-Prince, and with no elected officials remaining since 2023, Haiti has been described as a failed state.