Haiti has a painful history with debt. When it won its independence in 1804, just the second country in the hemisphere to do so, it was required to pay restitution to France. Haiti went millions of dollars (billions in today’s dollars) into debt to compensate the French for their loss of property, including the lost profits from slave trading. Only by paying this restitution could Haiti end a crippling embargo by the French, British, and Americans. Money that the new government might have invested in building a new nation poured into loan payments that continued until the loan was paid off in 1947.
Today, in the wake of the earthquake that has flattened Port-au-Prince and killed more than 150,000, there is a quickly growing movement to forgive Haiti’s US$1 billion in outstanding debt and to insure that aid to earthquake victims takes the form of grants, not more loans.
There isn’t much time to act: G7 finance ministers could reach a final decision next week at their summit in Canada. Avaaz.org is currently calling for more people to sign their petition to cancel cancel Haiti’s debt which they will deliver directly to the summit.