The CARICOM Reparations Commission, chaired by The UWI Vice-Chancellor Sir Hilary Beckles, is calling for reparatory justice, to account for the forced displacement of over 12 million people from the African continent by European colonial powers, and over 350 years of enslavement and unpaid labour by them and their descendants, which made a signi cant contribution to the rapid development and accumulation of wealth held today by European nations, private corporations and individual families.
By contrast, the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, which required the payment of £20 million to slave owners in compensation for loss of "property", left formerly enslaved people landless, homeless and uncompensated, setting future generations and emerging societies such as the Caribbean, at a significant economic and social loss.
This is not about retribution and anger... it is about the building of bridges across lines of moral justice.
Vice-Chancellor, Sir Hilary Beckles
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles speaking on Reparatory Justice for Global Black Enslavement at a public lecture at Harvard University. PHOTO COURTESY: HARVARD UNIVERSITY.
At Oxford University, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles delivers the inaugural lecture in the Race and the Curriculum in Oxford lecture series. His topic - Britain’s Black Debt: Reparatory Justice and the Restoration of 'moral nation status'.
The Commission has identified ten points of action that go beyond financial reparations to include support for educational development, health and medical systems, and other pressing needs in the Caribbean (http://caricomreparations.org/). Reparations would therefore benefit not only people of African descent, but all Caribbean citizens.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, author of Britain's Black Debt: Reparations for Slavery and Native Genocide in the Caribbean (UWI Press 2013) is a longtime advocate of reparations. He advanced the call for reparatory justice at a meeting at the House of Commons in London, UK, on January 28, 2016. The meeting, hosted by Member of Parliament Diana Abbot, was attended by political leaders, academicians, and representatives of civil society. It was designed to share information and develop strategies across Britain and the Caribbean to advance the movement for reparatory justice. In an inaugural lecture on Race and the Curriculum at Oxford University, Professor Beckles also spoke on reparatory justice at the invitation of the University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Louise Richardson. In addressing students and faculty at one of the UK’s oldest and most illustrious academic institutions, Professor Beckles stated that reparatory justice is not a call for handouts as many believe.
He noted, "On the contrary, it is a renewed call for development cooperation between Britain and the Caribbean." Vice-Chancellor Beckles proposed that Britain establish a facility like the Jewish Reparation Fund, paid into by Germany and other European nations after the Holocaust, which drives Israeli development projects.
On February 22, 2016, Vice-Chancellor Beckles also delivered a distinguished public lecture at Harvard Law School in the US, titled "Reparatory Justice for Global Black Enslavement: The Greatest Political Movement of the 21st Century". Drawing attention to the Black Lives Matter movement, Sir Hilary indicated that there was a present need for reparatory justice, to build bridges across lines of moral justice. Prof. Annette Gordon-Reed, Charles Warren and Carol Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcli e Institute and Professor of Law at Harvard University, also pointed to the importance of understanding that "slavery was not just a system of holding people in bondage. It was holding people in bondage for a purpose...to make money off of their bodies." This system therefore accrued an economic as well as moral debt that calls out for justice.
