Number: RS22879
Title: Haiti: Legislative Responses to the Food Crisis and Related Development Challenges
Authors: Clare Ribando Seelke and J. F. Hornbeck, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division 
Abstract: Haiti faces several interrelated challenges, the most immediate being a lingering food crisis that in April 2008 led to deadly protests and the ouster of Haiti's prime minister. Haiti also suffers from a legacy of poverty, unemployment, and underdevelopment that is compounding security problems for its new and fragile democracy. On May 23, 2008, the Bush Administration announced that it would send an additional $25 million in emergency food aid to Haiti, bringing its total emergency contribution to $45 million. In late June 2008, Congress appropriated $1.2 billion in FY2008 and FY2009 supplemental assistance for P.L. 480 food aid in the FY2008 Supplemental Appropriations Act, H.R. 2642 (P.L. 110-252). Haiti is one of ten priority countries likely to receive a portion of that assistance. In June 2008, the House and Senate also passed the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (H.R. 6124/P.L. 110-246), the Farm Bill. Title XV includes the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement (HOPE) Act of 2008, which provides tariff preferences for U.S. imports of Haitian apparel, its largest export sector.
Pages: 6
Date: October 2, 2008