Data Insights

Seafood occupies a modest but notable place in Haitian exports, driven in recent years by an unexpected product: eels. Once a marginal activity, it has grown over the span of a decade into one of the sector's leading sources of foreign exchange, well ahead of spiny lobster, the country's traditional fishery export.

In 2017, according to the Bank of the Republic of Haiti (BRH), the value of eel exports reached nearly 13.4 million US dollars, compared to 2.9 million for lobster, a complete reversal from 2009, when lobster had dominated the country's seafood exports. Most of these exports are actually glass eels, young eels caught in rivers and then shipped live to Asia, where they are raised to adulthood.

Unlike other export sectors, this trade has developed with little oversight. The glass eel trade has the characteristics of an open-access resource: export licenses are issued by the state, but no quota system is genuinely enforced, and the volumes actually harvested are subject to no real constraint. This affects a species already classified as "endangered" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, largely due to overfishing.

Source: Bank of the Republic of Haiti, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, General Customs Administration. Data processed and visualized by Ayitistats.

Mobile phones and the Internet have profoundly transformed the way people communicate, access information, and use certain services. In Haiti, mobile telephony now plays an essential role in providing access to financial services and other digital services, even in areas where fixed Internet coverage remains limited.

In 2022, the country had approximately 7.5 million active mobile phone subscriptions, representing nearly 64% of the population. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a mobile subscription refers to a prepaid or postpaid subscription to a public mobile telephone service that provides access to voice communications, excluding, in particular, USB modems, data cards, and paging services.

Compared with other regions of the world, the adoption of communication technologies in Haiti remains relatively limited. Internet access and usage illustrate this situation. In 2021, less than half of the population used the Internet, representing approximately 4.9 million users, many of whom did not have access to 4G network coverage.

Source: World Bank, International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Data processed and visualized by Ayitistats.

In 2024, an estimated 1.96 million people born in Haiti were living abroad. According to data from the United Nations (Department of Economic and Social Affairs), more than 4 in 10 Haitian emigrants are in the United States, the top destination with around 798,000 people. The Dominican Republic ranks second with over 535,000 emigrants, followed by Chile, France, and Canada.

Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2024), Our World in Data, with light visual editing by AyitiStats.

Military personnel refers to all active-duty service members, including certain paramilitary forces capable of supporting or replacing the regular army.

In 1989, the country had approximately 9,000 active soldiers. Two years later, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was overthrown in a military coup, just seven months after taking power. Upon his return from exile in 1995, he officially demobilized the Forces Armées d'Haïti (FADH), an institution marked by decades of abuses and political interference. The resulting security vacuum was filled by the National Police and international forces, notably MINUSTAH, a UN mission present for 13 years.

In 2010, a devastating earthquake struck Haiti. Amid the chaos, the last remaining elements of the former forces disappeared from the records, and the indicator officially dropped to zero.

Then in 2017, as the Blue Helmets prepared to leave the country, Haiti began rebuilding its army: 500 recruits, aged 18 to 25, selected through a competitive process in Léogâne. Idle youth, in a country plagued by endemic unemployment, who saw in this an opportunity to serve their nation.

By 2020, the Haitian army had reached 1,000 soldiers, a figure still largely symbolic in the face of today's security challenges.

Source: The Military Balance — International Institute for Strategic Studies (2026), World Bank. Data processed and visualized by Ayitistats.