The debt of Haiti is the main factor that’s caused its severe poverty. #Haitian #slaves declared themselves emancipated and an independent country in 1804, #France demanded that they pay the French government and French slaveholders the modern equivalent of $21 billion USD for the "theft" of the slaves' own lives and the land that they had turned into sugar and coffee plantations. This independence debt was financed by French banks and the American Citibank, and finally paid off in 1947. In the