People who fled their homes due to gang violence take shelter at Haiti’s Ministry of Public Works building in Port-au-Prince, Haiti February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

PORT-AU-PRINCE, July 30 (Reuters) – Over 60 rights groups signed a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron calling for reparations to Haiti over the crippling payments it paid France as compensation for lost property – including slaves – after its independence.

The letter dated on Tuesday came as activists in Haiti, which has the lowest GDP per capita in the Americas and is battling a worsening gang conflict amid little international support, call for billions of dollars in reparations.

“The wealth extracted under this ransom set Haiti’s GDP growth back by decades, and resulted in a cycle of foreign aid dependence and entrenched debt that persists to this day,” the letter said. “It is long past time for France to acknowledge and remedy this injustice.”

Signatories included diaspora and reparations groups in the United States, Africa, and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Macron in April said he would set up a joint Franco-Haitian commission to examine their “painful” past but avoided discussing reparations.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tab

Suggested Topics:

Read Next

A very powerful magnitude 8.8 earthquake off Russia’s Far Eastern Kamchatka coast on Wednesday triggered tsunami warnings as far away as French Polynesia and Chile, and was followed by an eruption of the most active volcano on the peninsula.

Site Index

About Reuters

Stay Informed

Information you can trust

Reuters, the news and media division of Thomson Reuters, is the world’s largest multimedia news provider, reaching billions of people worldwide every day. Reuters provides business, financial, national and international news to professionals via desktop terminals, the world’s media organizations, industry events and directly to consumers.

Read More