Hosted by the University of the Bahamas in partnership with Equality Bahamas and the National Reparations Committee, this symposium on reparatory justice for Haiti brings together scholars, activists, journalists, and members of the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. The speakers include Gel Curry (Vice Chair, UN Permanent Forum), Dr. Jun Suma (Immediate Past Chair, UN Permanent Forum), Monique Clesca (Haitian civil society leader and journalist), Jackson Jean (Haitian journalist and political critic), Colette Espinas (human rights activist and founder of GAR), Tracy Asing (writer, filmmaker, and indigenous Caribbean advocate), and Commissioner Marian Bathl Sears (Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Rapporteur for Haiti).
1. France forced Haiti to pay a ransom for its own freedom, and Haiti paid it for 122 years.
In 1825, under the threat of 14 warships, France demanded 150 million francs from the winners of the Haitian Revolution, compensation for the “property” the colonizers lost, meaning enslaved human beings. With interest, Haiti paid an estimated $150 to $200 billion in today’s money. Nearly 85% of Haiti’s coffee export income was diverted to this debt. The country could not invest in schools, hospitals, or infrastructure for over a century.
2. The US occupation of 1915 compounded the wound.
When American forces arrived in Haiti, they seized Haiti’s national gold reserves, rewrote its constitution to allow foreign land ownership, and controlled its banks until 1934. What followed was a country structurally prevented from standing on its own. The gangsterism, displacement, and food insecurity Haiti faces today are the downstream consequences of these two compounding extractions, not evidence of inherent dysfunction.
3. Haitian migration is not a crisis. It is the predictable result of a 200-year-old ransom.
The people drowning in the Caribbean Sea did not choose to leave. They were made to leave by a system designed to extract labor and resources while preventing development. Criminalizing Haitian migration without addressing its root cause is not policy. It is the continuation of the same architecture.
4. The legal case for restitution is strong and the precedents already exist.
Germany, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have all paid reparations in various forms. The 1825 indemnity was extracted by force, which under Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties makes it potentially void. The debate is not about whether reparations are possible. It is about whether Haiti’s suffering is considered legitimate enough to matter.
5. The Caribbean must treat Haiti’s restitution as a regional cause, not a Haitian cause.
Dr. Jun Suma, Monique Clesca, and Jackson Jean all argue the same thing: Haiti is the soul of the Caribbean. The first nation to legislate freedom for all human beings. The revolution that inspired uprisings across the region. If the Caribbean allows Haiti to continue dying slowly while building their own tourism economies on the same sea where Haitian bodies are sinking, they betray everything the Haitian Revolution stood for.
“Haiti didn’t become poor. It was made poor. France and the United States decided that Haiti must die slowly. And for 200 years, we have been dying slowly.”
— Jackson Jean, Haitian journalist and political critic
“That money could have built schools in every village, hospitals in every city. Instead, it went to France. It built their banks, their universities, their cities.”
— Jackson Jean
“You can draw a straight line from the trafficking of Africans, to enslavement, to colonialism, to the persistent underdevelopment and challenges in Haiti. It’s a straight line.”
— Gel Curry, Vice Chair, UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent
“The Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean is already full of the souls of people of African descent. We cannot allow Haitians to die in the sea again. If we do not ensure that Haiti is restored, the rest of the Caribbean will never have a soul.”
— Dr. Jun Suma, Immediate Past Chair, UN Permanent Forum
“Reparations have already been paid. The debate today is not about feasibility. The debate is about whether our suffering counts.”
— Jackson Jean