Haiti

The world's first black-led republic and the first Caribbean state to achieve independence, Haiti's pride has been dented by decades of poverty, environmental degradation, violence, instability and dictatorship which have left it as the poorest nation in the Americas.

A mostly mountainous country with a tropical climate, Haiti's location, history and culture - epitomised by voodoo, with its music, drumming and dancing - once made it a potential tourist hot spot. Instability and violence, especially since the 1980s, have all but killed off this prospect.

Haiti achieved notoriety during the brutal dictatorships of the voodoo physician, Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and his son, Jean-Claude, or "Baby Doc". Hopes that the election in 1990 of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a former priest, would herald a brighter future were dashed when he was overthrown by the military a short time later.

Although economic sanctions and US-led military intervention forced a return to constitutional government in 1994, Haiti's fortunes did not pick up, with allegations of electoral irregularities, ongoing extra-judicial killings, torture and brutality.

A bloody rebellion, and pressure from the US and France, forced Mr Aristide out of the country in 2004. An interim government took over and a UN stabilisation force was deployed to restore order. But Haiti is still plagued by violent confrontations between rival gangs and political groups and the UN has described the human rights situation as "catastrophic".

Meanwhile, Haiti's most serious underlying social problem, the huge wealth gap between the impoverished Creole-speaking black majority and the French-speaking mulattos, 1% of whom own nearly half the country's wealth, remains unaddressed. Furthermore, the infrastructure has all but collapsed and drug trafficking has corrupted the judicial system and the police.

Haiti is ill-equipped to deal with the aftermath of tropical storms. Severe deforestation has left it particularly vulnerable to flooding.

-BBC News