Haiti's disastrous history in pictures

Late 1700s: Pierre Dominique Toussaint-l'Ouverture, black revolutionary leader and liberator of Haiti. The former slave eventually dies in prison in France for his stance against slavery
Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

1908: The president, Alexis Nord, is shown covered with a French flag during the revolution in Haiti
Photograph: Collection Roger-Viollet/AFP

1950s: A woman in a trance at a voodoo ceremony. Amid hypnotic chants and drumming, the men on either side – who are assistants to the houngan (high priest) – help to guide the woman through the unseen world
Photograph: Bradley Smith/Corbis

1962: The autocratic president François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier seated on the centre of a reviewing dais, surrounded by members of his government and the Haitian military
Photograph: Robert Lerner/Getty Images

1975: Jean-Claude Duvalier ('Baby Doc') takes over the presidency in 1971 after his father dies. 'Baby Doc' is eventually overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986
Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

1986: Haitians dance in the street in front of the National Palace in Port-au-Prince to celebrate the flight into exile of the dictator Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier
Photograph: Lynne Slady/Bettmann/Corbis

1995: A girl cries after someone stole the rubbish she had scavenged at the city dump in Port-au-Prince. Food and clothing remain scarce and expensive despite Haiti's occupation by US troops and the return of the formerly exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Photograph: Daniel Morel/AP

2001: Jean-Bertand Aristide acknowledges applause after being sworn in as president, having run virtually unopposed in November 2000 elections
Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

2004: The body of a young man lies on the pavement in Bel-Air, an impoverished neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. Three are killed when gunfire erupts in a stronghold of Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he is ousted for a second time
Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP

2004: A bus filled with Haitian people makes its way south on a flooded road near the north-eastern town of Gonaives after floods inundate the city and its surroundings. Thousands of homes are destroyed and about a quarter of a million people are estimated to have been affected by the effects of hurricane Jeanne
Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

2004: Haitians reach for cans of food thrown from the back of a container filled with aid in Gonaives, five days after floods inundated the city and its surrounds
Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP

2004: Mud cakes – which are actually eaten – being made in Cite Soleil, one of the poorest slum areas of Port-au-Prince. They are sometimes the only food available for the poor
Photograph: David Levene

2006: A Haitian policeman appeals to a crowd trying to enter a polling station in Port-au-Prince. Polls are swamped as voters decide who will replace the ousted president, Jean Bertrand Aristide
Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

2006: A voodoo believer carries a botle of rum during a ceremony at La Plaine du Nord. For weeks pilgrims from all over Haiti descend on the town for annual voodoo ceremonies celebrating spiritual traditions brought to the island by slaves from West Africa
Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP

2006: At sunrise, a Haitian man walks with empty jugs to get water alongside an open sewer canal in the Cite Soleil slum of Port-au-Prince
Photograph: Brennan Linsley/AP

2007: Refugees line up to get food and supplies from UN peacekeepers at a school in the Cite Soleil slum in Port-au-Prince. Floodwaters and mudslides spawned by tropical storm Noel killed at least 48 people in Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP

2008: Pilgrims bathe and pray in the waterfall at Saut D'eau. In one of the first of the major pilgrimages of the season, both voodoo and Catholic people flock here in their thousands to pray for help and good fortune
Photograph: David Levene

2008: An aerial view of the flooded area of Gonaives after tropical storm Hanna, which swirled over Haiti for four days, leaving at least 61 dead
Photograph: Marco Dormino/AP

2008: A man walks past a burning barricade during an anti-government demonstration in Port-au-Prince. Protesters angered by high food prices flooded into the streets, forcing businesses and schools to close as unrest spread from the countryside
Photograph: Ariana Cubillos/AP

2010: An injured child receives medical treatment after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince. The 7.0 magnitude quake killed thousands as it crumpled the presidential palace and hillside shanties alike, leaving the nation appealing for international help
Photograph: Eduardo Munoz/Reuters

2010: Bodies in front of the morgue at Port-au-Prince general hospital, two days after the earthquake
Photograph: Logan Abassi/AFP/Getty Images