Why there's hope for Haiti
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.2 • 7.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Armed gangs now control much of Port-au-Prince and more than a million people have been forced from their homes. In this Global News Podcast special, Nick Miles and Nawal Al-Maghafi hear from Haitians on the front line, including a pro-democracy activist, a feminist campaigner supporting survivors of sexual violence, and a medic trying to keep emergency services going in a city under siege. They tell us how people are resisting, what real change would look like, and why so many people still believe Haiti has a future worth fighting for.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.6 | American politics can sometimes feel like a different language. |
| 0:11.1 | But our podcast can help you translate. |
| 0:13.3 | Make sense of what's happening in the US, with new podcast episodes arriving throughout the week. |
| 0:18.1 | AmeriCast, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:21.1 | This is a special edition of the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service |
| 0:25.2 | looking at what can help bring about a brighter future for the Caribbean nation of Haiti. |
| 0:32.5 | I'm Nick Miles and in a former role reported from Haiti a number of times in the early 2000s. |
| 0:38.9 | Struggling with poverty and political instability even then, in recent years the country has |
| 0:44.4 | descended into wider gang violence. Together with the BBC's investigations correspondent |
| 0:49.9 | Nawal Al-Maghafi, who's reported extensively from Haiti, I'll be joined by the Haitian democracy |
| 0:55.5 | activist Monique Kleska, Women's Rights Group organiser Pascal Solage and Diana Manilla Arroyo, |
| 1:03.3 | who works for the medical charity Medcins Saint-Frontier in the Haitian capital, Porto-Prince. |
| 1:10.8 | Together, we will talk about Haiti's current problems, but also look at the people who are working |
| 1:16.1 | hard to resolve them and prove that their country is far from being beyond hope. |
| 1:25.7 | The lazy shorthand, the cliche, if you like for Haiti, is that it's the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, |
| 1:32.6 | a hopeless case that's not known stability for decades where violent gangs rule and international aid providers are fighting a losing battle with the chaos. |
| 1:42.9 | But let's interrogate that narrative a bit. |
| 1:45.9 | First of all, some basics. Haiti is a country in the Caribbean neighbouring the Dominican Republic. |
| 1:51.0 | 11 million people live there. It famously gained independence from France over 200 years ago |
| 1:56.7 | after a slave revolt. A bold start for a new nation, but countless times since then, it's been hit |
| 2:04.0 | by waves of political violence and natural disasters. Poverty has led to hundreds of thousands of people |
... |
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