Reflecting on ten (10) years of actions aimed toward defining a path to reconciliation, fact and justice for victims of slavery and native genocide and their descendants, the CARICOM Reparations Fee (CRC) has attributed current progress to strategic alliances with key stakeholders.
Strategic Partnerships
The CRC has constructed robust partnerships and coalitions to extend advocacy and consciousness within the Americas, Africa and Europe; strategic alliances have been shaped with the Nationwide African American Reparations Committee (NAARC), World African Congress in Canada, Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Growth Analysis, Ateker Worldwide Growth Group (AIDO), universities in the UK, and regional civil society organisations, notably people who have grow to be members of the CRC.
Ten (10) years of combating for reparatory justice
The Fee’s progress over the past decade consists of the implementation of a sturdy reparatory justice advocacy and public schooling marketing campaign as mandated by the Thirty-Fourth Assembly of CARICOM Heads of Authorities in 2013, which established the physique.
The CARICOM Ten Level Plan for Reparatory Justice, developed by the CRC in 2014, has additionally obtained vital assist from CRC stakeholders. The UN Everlasting Discussion board of Folks of African Descent, at its inaugural assembly in Geneva in December 2022, expressed assist for the CARICOM Ten Level Plan and referred to as for its adoption globally. The NAARC, established in April 2015 in New York, has articulated a Ten-Level Motion Plan based mostly on the CARICOM mannequin. Reparations Commissions or advocacy teams have been established or are in improvement in Brazil, Colombia, Canada, the UK and the Netherlands, impressed by CARICOM’s lead.
Amplified Advocacy
By its symposia, public lectures, and participation in panel discussions organised by companions and its publications, the CRC has elevated information and understanding and raised consciousness in regards to the unpaid debt owed to the Caribbean for over 400 years of genocide of the Indigenous folks and dehumanising chattel enslavement of Africans.
Conferences organised by the CRC in partnership with many main researchers and advocates have launched new information in areas such because the historical past of the Western banking system, intergenerational trauma and the upper incidence within the Caribbean of non-communicable ailments reminiscent of hypertension, linked to circumstances skilled within the Area underneath slavery.
As well as, the CRC has amplified advocacy and enabled a well timed response from CARICOM to vital developments such because the apology from the Authorities of the Netherlands in 2022 and the invention that the abolition mortgage taken by the British Parliament to finish slavery in its colonies, was solely paid off in 2015.
Enthusiastic in regards to the subsequent ten years
The Fee is enthusiastic in regards to the subsequent ten years because it continues with actions advocating for justice for victims of slavery. These embrace campaigning for the observance of Emancipation Day by all Member States; the instructing of historical past as obligatory in Caribbean secondary colleges as much as Grade 11; implementation of the regional renaming mission the place streets, monuments, parks and different public areas bearing the names that replicate a colonial legacy, ought to be renamed/eliminated, and continued efforts to facilitate reconnection with Africa, by constructing a powerful coalition and assist for the reparations agenda among the many governments and other people of Africa.
The Fee’s dedication and willpower stay agency within the imaginative and prescient of a path to reconciliation, fact, and justice for the victims of slavery and their descendants.
