‘We have no desire to bankrupt anybody, but we have a desire for justice’: Reparations movement pushes towards action

For three days, government officials, regional leaders, reparations advocates, academics, and representatives of African and Caribbean communities and the global diaspora gathered in Barbados as the Caribbean’s reparations movement sought to translate decades of advocacy into concrete action.

The Third CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations, held from September 17 to 19 at the Wyndham Grand Barbados Sam Lord’s Castle, brought together regional and international voices under the theme “Reparatory Justice as the Coming Enlightenment”.

The conference came at a significant point for the movement, following the adoption of a United Nations resolution in March declaring the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans the “gravest crime against humanity”, as well as Jamaica’s recent petition to King Charles seeking legal consideration of questions surrounding slavery and Britain’s responsibility for reparatory remedy.