Looking back on 2020, Haiti’s year can be understood as a story of cascading crises that reinforced and compounded one another with devastating effect. A country already weakened by years of political conflict and economic decline had to absorb a global pandemic, intensifying gang violence, storm damage, and the exhausting continuation of a political standoff with no end in sight.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which in many countries had at least briefly overridden political divisions in the interest of a common public health response, arrived in Haiti in a political environment too fractured for even minimal consensus. The government’s pandemic management was hampered by the absence of legislative oversight, limited institutional capacity, and deep public distrust. The virus spread through a population with no safety net and a healthcare system already on its knees.
Yet 2020 also demonstrated the extraordinary resilience that Haitians had developed over generations of adversity. Healthcare workers continued to serve communities without adequate supplies or salaries. Teachers found ways to maintain some educational continuity through makeshift remote learning. Community organizations filled gaps left by the failing state. Artists kept creating. Entrepreneurs kept building. Families kept caring for one another.
The fundamental question that 2020 had not answered — whether Haiti’s political class could find the wisdom and will to create the conditions for the country’s recovery — remained unanswered as the year ended. But the Haitian people’s capacity to endure and adapt had been demonstrated once again, and that capacity, however tested, had not been broken.