In mid-April, a coalition bringing together nearly twenty non-governmental organizations present in Geneva during the United Nations Permanent Forum for People of African Descent (PFPAD), expressed their desire to set up a new independent commission with the aim of overseeing the restitution of France’s debt to Haiti.
“It is time for France to recognize this and for us to move forward,” Haitian activist Monique Clesca, who is organizing initiatives aimed at pushing France to return these funds unjustly taken from Haiti, told the Reuters news agency. A sum that organizations estimate at more than 100 billion dollars.
The initiative of these NGOs has the support of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who declared during his closing speech United Nations Permanent Forum for People of African Descent:
I join your calls for immediate action. When it comes to reparations, we must finally enter a new era. Governments must demonstrate real leadership by making a sincere commitment to move quickly from words to action to right the wrongs of the past.
Remember that France had demanded from Haiti an indemnity of 150 million francs in gold to compensate the former colonists in order to recognize the independence of the country. Haiti finished repaying this debt in 1947, and continued to pay interest to banks in the United States and France until 1952.
According to estimates from the New York Times in 2022, the equivalent of this debt varies, in the year considered, between 20 and 108 billion dollars, even if historians and other specialists have never managed to agree on an estimate. exact.
However, it should be remembered that under the presidency of the leader of Fanmi Lavalas, Jean Bertrand Aristide, the former clergyman had estimated France’s debt to Haiti at 21,585,135,571,48 US dollars.
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