On April 9, 2025, the Coordination Europe-Haïti (CoEH) held its first General Assembly of the year. During this meeting, members of our advocacy platform on Haiti reflected on the current situation in the country, particularly the presence of heavily armed groups that defy authorities, displace populations, and destroy everything in their path with complete disregard for lives and property. The members of CoEH condemn the systematic human rights violations committed by these gangs — especially the violence targeting women and girls — and deplore the failure of the current Haitian leadership to develop strategies to protect the population, meet basic needs, and govern the country effectively.
The CoEH members question how these armed groups continue to grow in strength, deploy effective military strategies to seize large parts of the country, and receive regular and ample supplies of weapons, ammunition, and other logistics essential to their deadly operations. The CoEH is alarmed by reports from credible sources such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and authorities in neighbouring countries like the Dominican Republic and Colombia, which indicate involvement of international traffickers of drugs, weapons, and ammunition from those countries in the violence in Haiti. All signs suggest that the current security crisis in Haiti has deep national and international roots. The country appears caught in the grip of a vast network of transnational organized crime that exploits institutional and infrastructural weaknesses to capture the state and expand its reach across all sectors and throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, and even Europe.
During our General Assembly, CoEH members also discussed the bicentenary of the French royal ordinance of April 17, 1825, by King Charles X, which demanded that Haiti pay a ransom of 150 million gold francs to former slaveholding colonists in exchange for recognition of its independence — a hard-won freedom achieved through struggle against slavery and colonialism. Backed by 14 warships with 500 cannons ready to impose a naval blockade or launch a bombardment, Haiti’s leaders at the time were forced to accept this extortion. The odious debt was later compounded by loans Haiti had to take from French banks in order to make the annual payments — this is what is known as the “double debt.”
In reviewing this history, we have come to understand how this original sin — commonly referred to as the “independence debt” — is one of the root causes of the poverty in which Haiti remains mired today. This ransom, demanded just after independence, prevented the young nation — newly freed from slavery — from investing in basic infrastructure and services such as healthcare and education, and perpetuated the cycle of exploitation and violence against which the enslaved had rebelled.
This ransom is a historical injustice. It triggered a cycle of extraction, debt, and dependence on foreign aid, which led to Haiti’s underdevelopment. It also rendered the country unstable and vulnerable to domination by elites and foreign interference.
The current crisis in Haiti (in 2025) — where gangs rule, the entire population is desperate, and forging a path to a meaningful life is nearly impossible — is, in many ways, the direct consequence of that century-long ransom. The root of the widespread criminalization of Haiti lies in chronic poverty and deep social inequalities that have accumulated and been perpetuated over two centuries of economic suffocation under neocolonialism.
Today, facing overwhelming insecurity, Haiti needs substantial resources to defend and rebuild itself. We support the demand for the restitution by France of the updated amounts of this ransom — now estimated at more than €20 billion euros — so the country can invest in reorganizing and securing its territory, protecting its population with dignity, building infrastructure, and delivering basic services. This is not about charity, assistance, or humanitarian aid — it is about restorative justice and the return of resources that were unjustly and violently extorted from a young nation that had just emerged from slavery and colonialism.
The Coordination Europe-Haïti (CoEH) takes note of French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement on April 17 acknowledging this injustice toward Haiti. However, we regret that no concrete commitments to restitution or reparations have been made, despite the demands of the Haitian government, numerous Haitian civil society organizations, members of the diaspora, and solidarity groups around the world. CoEH commends the courage of various French organizations, including its own members in France, who mobilized during the bicentennial of Charles X’s ordinance to support the same demand expressed by Haitians for the restitution of this debt/ransom. We encourage organizations in member countries and the French public to stand firmly with the Haitian people during this crucial time in their history, in the spirit of restorative justice.
CoEH also calls on the European Union (EU)—whose member states also benefited, directly or indirectly, from the ransom imposed on Haiti, from slavery, and from colonialism in the Caribbean—to incorporate the issue of restitution and reparations into their work and to support Haiti in its quest for justice. We also urge the EU to strengthen and expand its collaboration to better control the international trafficking of weapons, ammunition, and drugs that is destabilizing Haiti.
CoEH remains in full solidarity with the Haitian people in their suffering and in their fight to overcome the current situation and to take their destiny into their own hands with full sovereignty and dignity.
Colette Lespinasse, CoEH Correspondent in Haiti
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