By Catarina Demony
(Reuters) – The push for slavery reparations is at a defining moment, a Caribbean Community official said on the second day of a United Nations forum, adding it was time to step up actions to hold former colonial powers to account for past wrongs.
“Enough talk, time for concrete results,” said Hilary Brown on Tuesday, representative of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, at the fourth session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in New York.
Calls for reparations are longstanding but have been gaining momentum worldwide, particularly among CARICOM and the African Union. Backlash against it has also been growing.
CARICOM has a reparations plan, which, among other demands, calls for technology transfers and investments to tackle health crises and illiteracy. The AU is developing its own plan.
CARICOM and the AU have in recent years joined forces in the fight for reparations, and Brown said that partnership put the movement at a “defining moment” as they can use one voice to demand action.
Brown said together they could advance the reparations agenda at the UN and other intergovernmental bodies, co-sponsor a joint UN resolution on reparations and advocate for a high-level political forum on the issue.
“CARICOM is ready to take this agenda to the next level, and we welcome the partnership of the AU and other coalitions that share the vision and conviction necessary to ensure that Europe is held to account,” Brown said.
Many of Europe’s leaders have opposed even talking about reparations.
At least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped, forcibly transported by European ships and sold into slavery from the 15th to the 19th centuries.
Opponents of reparations argue, among other things, that contemporary states and institutions should not be held responsible for their past.
But advocates say action is needed to address the legacies, such as systemic and structural racism, and say that contemporary states still benefit from the wealth generated by hundreds of years of exploitation.
(Reporting by Catarina Demony in London; Editing by Rod Nickel)
