Haiti 🇭🇹

Haiti is a country in the Caribbean, one of the 28 entries this site files under that subregion. In formal use it is Republic of Haiti. The capital is Port-au-Prince.

Some 11.8 million people call it home, placing it 83rd of 250 by population — between Belgium above it and Jordan below. Among the 28 entries in the Caribbean it ranks 3rd by area and 1st by population.

Its territory runs to 27,750 km², which ranks it 149th of the 250 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind Burundi and just ahead of Rwanda. Put next to a country most people can picture, it is a fraction smaller than Belgium.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 19.0° north, 72.4° west, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 2,115 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach India, Mali and Mauritania — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

Its land neighbours number 1: the Dominican Republic.

It has both a coastline and land borders, which is the most common arrangement of all.

Spread across 27,750 km², that works out at about 424 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 90 per square kilometre.

2 languages carry official status: French and Haitian Creole. Haitian Creole is listed for no other entry in this dataset, which makes it effectively unique to Haiti. French, the first listed, is shared with 45 other entries worldwide.

People from Haiti are called Haitians.

Inside the Americas it places 13th of 56 by population, and it accounts for 27% of everyone living in the Caribbean.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Haiti ranks 149th of 250 by area and 83rd by population. That works out at 0.018% of the combined land area of all 250 entries and 0.14% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Haiti in the size ordering are Burundi at 27,834 km² and Rwanda at 26,338 km², against Haiti's 27,750 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Haiti averages 424 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it densely settled by global standards — 33rd of the 248 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

Within Caribbean, Haiti is the most populous of the 28 entries this site lists, and 3rd by area. Dominican Republic is next in line by population.

Every entry in Caribbean has its own guide here, so if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time, Dominican Republic is the place to carry on.

• 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic
• 🇭🇹 Haiti

The Haitian gourde (HTG) is used only in Haiti among the 250 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Language reaches wider still. French is listed for 46 entries here, Haiti among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

It uses the Haitian gourde (G, HTG). It is issued for Haiti alone.

The top-level domain is .ht. To phone it from abroad you dial +509. Its ISO codes are ht and HTI, which is what most databases and flag files use.

If a quiz asks for the capital of Haiti, the answer is Port-au-Prince.

It holds a seat at the United Nations, one of 193 entries here that do. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 250 rather than the familiar 195.