Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has chal­lenged cit­i­zens to “con­front the in­jus­tices and in­equal­i­ties” that per­sist in so­ci­ety in her African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day mes­sage. Kan­ga­loo al­so called on the pop­u­la­tion to “ex­am­ine our own roles in ei­ther per­pet­u­at­ing or chal­leng­ing these wrongs.”

She re­mem­bered the sys­tem of slav­ery, which she said was bru­tal and de­hu­man­is­ing. How­ev­er, Kan­ga­loo added, “There can be no greater tes­ta­ment to the pow­er of the hu­man spir­it that, even in chains, the en­slaved nev­er ful­ly sur­ren­dered.”

As the con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing repa­ra­tions con­tin­ue around the Caribbean and the world, Kan­ga­loo added that it is not on­ly about fi­nan­cial re­dress. She ex­plained, “Repara­to­ry jus­tice ac­knowl­edges the long-term ef­fects of slav­ery and colo­nial­ism, and seeks ap­pro­pri­ate re­dress. It is not lim­it­ed to fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion, but in­cludes in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, in­vest­ment in ed­u­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment, cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal restora­tion and pub­lic recog­ni­tion of past in­jus­tices. It is a holis­tic frame­work aimed at re­pair­ing his­tor­i­cal harm and ad­dress­ing its con­se­quences.”