Overview:
The international community should be providing restitution to Haiti, not sending in foreign troops again, the author writes.
By Kristina Fried
The writer is a Staff Attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti.
As Haitians celebrate the anniversary of their hard-won independence from France in 1804, we are reminded that the many harms Haitians suffered as a result of slavery, colonialism and their modern-day corollaries have yet to be redressed. As Haiti now faces yet another threat to its sovereignty in the form of a foreign intervention, the need for redress is all the more urgent.
Haitians suffered many of the same harms faced by enslaved people of African descent across the world – forced labor, murder, mutilation, sexual assault and family separation, as well as the original harms of kidnapping and enslavement. Like their cousins in the United States, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, Haitians also suffered after slavery’s abolition from systematic discrimination that ensured their continued marginalization.
But as the first country to abolish slavery – and the world’s first free Black Republic – Haiti posed a unique threat to the powerful countries that built their wealth and global standing on the backs of slaves. Particularly the United States and France. As a result, these countries began a coordinated campaign to ensure that Haiti did not succeed. Core to this campaign was the so-called “Independence Debt,” a huge sum of money extorted from Haiti by France at gunpoint in exchange for French recognition of Haiti’s sovereignty. The debt included payments for the value of the emancipated Haitians themselves, to compensate French slave-owners for their losses.
To begin paying the Independence Debt – which exceeded 10 years of government revenue for the nascent country – Haiti was forced to borrow from French banks on predatory terms. Haiti later turned to U.S. and German financial institutions as well. While other countries were investing in their development, Haiti was forced to prioritize repayment of this “double debt.” It did not complete payments until the 1940s. By then, over a century of sacrificing investing in education, healthcare and industrial development had pushed Haiti into a cycle of entrenched debt and aid dependence.
Reparations overdue to Haitians
Haiti’s current poverty and instability is therefore to a large extent the intended result of the Independence Debt.
These forced payments now offer a distinct path toward monetary reparations for Haitians. The violence and threats that forced Haiti’s agreement to the debt fall squarely into the well-established legal theory of unjust enrichment. Haiti’s government unquestionably has standing to assert the claim. Calculating the damages is straightforward enough. Both the government of Haiti and the New York Times separately calculated the restitution claim to be around $21 billion, although the New York Times acknowledged that the true extent of damages could be upwards of $115 billion.
Just as Haiti’s self-emancipation in 1804 posed a threat to the global white supremacist order, the possibility of a successful restitution claim by Haiti threatened to force a global reckoning and re-allocation of wealth. So when Haiti’s democratically-elected President Aristide sought to assert the restitution claim in 2003, the United States and France, fearing a deluge of justice for those harmed by slavery, once again embarked on a coordinated campaign to prevent Haiti from succeeding. They orchestrated a coup to depose the President, then helped install a series of governments that have deliberately dismantled Haiti’s democratic structures, allowed gangs to flourish, and emptied Haiti’s coffers.
The MSS Mission and reparations link
In 20 years, no Haitian actors have sought to reassert the restitution claim. Why not? Because they will not bite the hand that feeds them.
International actors continue to prop up corrupt and repressive actors that lack the commitment and legitimacy to advance Haiti’s claim for restitution, including the current de facto regime led by Ariel Henry. The foreign intervention authorized by the UN Security Council in October – the Multinational Security Support (MSS) Mission – will only further entrench those same actors, while risking additional harms to the Haitian people.
As a first step to asserting the restitution claim, the international community must stop propping up the set of actors responsible for Haiti’s crisis, in order to allow Haitians to reclaim their democracy.
Kristina Fried is a Staff Attorney with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti (www.ijdh.org). J.D., Boston University School of Law; B.A., University of Melbourne. Kristina has been working in solidarity with Haitians to enforce their human rights for the past two years. Her areas of expertise include international human rights law and refugee and statelessness law and policy.