France President Emmanuel Macron has acknowledged that France, Haiti's coloniser, played a part in the historic injustices Haiti continues to face today.
This comes 200 years after Haiti was forced to pay 150 million gold francs to France in exchange for its independence to pay off French plantation owners for lost property on April 17, 1825.
"France subjected the people of Haiti to a heavy financial indemnity... This decision placed a price on the freedom of a young nation, which was thus confronted with the unjust force of history from its very inception," Macron said in a statement.
According to the United Nations (UN), this amount was way beyond the actual money lost and would take the young nation 140 years to repay.
Although it was the first republic to break itself from the shackles of slavery, it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the Caribbean because of the implications of this debt.
France would later reduce the debt to 90 million gold francs, and when Haiti was unable to repay, the European nation would lend it money for the same, digging its claws deeper into the country's budget.
By 1914, three-quarters of the country’s national budget was still being drained to repay French banks. It was not until 1947, over 140 years after independence, that Haiti settled its debt through French and American banks.
In 2022, an investigative piece by The New York Times revealed that the total amount Haiti ended up paying was $560 million in today's currency.
Reportedly, it could have added more than $20 billion to the country’s economy over time if it had been invested locally into the economy, according to some economists.
Now, 200 years later, 85 per cent of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, has been overtaken by gangs whose roots can be traced back to colonial times.
More than 5,600 people were reported killed last year, with gang violence leaving more than one million people homeless in recent years as Kenya's troops struggle to lead the Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission.
Speaking when marking 200 years since Haiti's independence, Macron announced the creation of a joint commission of Haitian and French historians to examine the impact of the 1825 indemnity.
However, the commission, which is expected to "examine our shared past" and assess relations, will fall short of addressing the longstanding Haitian demands for reparations.
Meanwhile, Kenyan forces, consisting of about 100 police officers, continue to offer support along with other countries, with two Kenyan police officers already confirmed dead.
