PM to appoint special group

Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley yesterday announced she will appoint a special committee of historians and economists to build a Barbadosspecific case for reparations, telling delegates at the third CARICOM Reparations Conference that the region’s moral argument must now be matched by hard evidence, even as she insisted the political will to act remains the ultimate test.

Speaking at the Wyndham Sam Lord’s Castle Resort in St Philip, on the opening day of the conference, Mottley said the committee would be tasked with quantifying the specific historical and economic harms Barbados had experienced from the transatlantic slave trade, moving beyond broad moral appeals.

“I will be appointing a technical committee of historians and economists to do the research so that our business-specific case can quantify the kinds of things that we have seen and experienced in this region,” she said, adding that other CARICOM member states should do the same.