Several dozen Haitian and Caribbean organizations have sent a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron regarding Haiti’s independence debt. In this correspondence, dated July 29, 2025, the signatories call on France to “uphold its stated human rights principles by repaying the independence debt it extorted from Haiti.”

“2025 marks the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s ‘independence debt,’ or, as many have rightly called it, the ‘ransom of independence.’ France’s decades-long silence on this issue is widely recognized not only as a moral failure but as a compounded injustice. It is high time for France to acknowledge and remedy this wrong,” the organizations write, noting that this ransom—which economists estimate cost Haiti at least tens of billions of dollars—plunged the nation into crushing debt, stalling its development for generations.