Haiti

Haiti covers 27,750 km2 and shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, its only land border. The Caribbean Sea lies to the south and the Atlantic to the north.

Around three quarters of the country is mountainous, with two main ranges separated by a central plain. Pic la Selle is the highest point at 2,680 m. Heavy deforestation has stripped much of the tree cover, which makes landslides and flooding far worse when storms hit.

Haiti is tropical, hot and humid, typically 25C to 32C in the lowlands and cooler in the mountains.

There are two rainy seasons, roughly April to June and August to October. Haiti sits in the hurricane belt and directly on a major fault line, and the 2010 earthquake near Port-au-Prince killed well over 200,000 people.

French and Haitian Creole are both official. Creole grew out of French mixed with West African languages and is what nearly everyone actually speaks.

Haitian painting is famous worldwide for its bold colours and crowded scenes. Around 85 per cent of Haitians are Christian, and Vodou, which blends West African religion with Catholicism, is also officially recognised.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas. Most people farm small plots, growing maize, beans, rice, mangoes and coffee, much of it for their own families.

Clothing factories making garments for the United States provide most export earnings, and money sent home by Haitians abroad is worth more than everything the country exports combined.

Two horizontal bands, blue on top and red below. The story is that in 1803 the revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines tore the white stripe out of the French tricolour, to show that white rule was finished, and had the blue and red sewn together.

A white square in the centre carries the coat of arms: a royal palm topped with a liberty cap, surrounded by cannons, flags and drums, above the motto "L'Union Fait La Force", meaning Unity Makes Strength.