11 Feb Haiti: A Creditor, Not a Debtor

February 11th, 2010
By Naomi Klein

If we are to believe the G-7 finance ministers, Haiti is on its way togetting something it has deserved for a very long time: full”forgiveness” of its foreign debt. In Port-au-Prince, Haitianeconomist Camille Chalmers has been watching these developments with cautiousoptimism. Debt cancellation is a good start, he told Al Jazeera English,but “It’s time to go much further. We have to talk about reparations andrestitution for the devastating consequences of debt.” In this telling,the whole idea that Haiti is a debtor needs to be abandoned. Haiti, heargues, is a creditor—and it is we, in the West, who are deeply inarrears.

Our debt to Haiti stems from four main sources: slavery, the USoccupation, dictatorship and climate change. These claims are notfantastical, nor are they merely rhetorical. They rest on multipleviolations of legal norms and agreements. Here, far too briefly, arehighlights of the Haiti case.