Caribbean nations are producing an “action plan” with legal options to push the United Kingdom (UK) into negotiating a decades-long slavery reparations deal, according to officials at a reparations conference.
Leaders in the region are hoping the UK would agree to targeted and constructive negotiation talks at upcoming Commonwealth and UN summits, but they are ready to take the matter to international courts if Britain continues to resist diplomatic options, according to the Guardian.
Earlier this month, a spokesperson reiterated the British government’s long‑held position that “the UK does not and will not pay reparations”.
Ralph Gonsalves, the former prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said the Caricom Regional Conference on Reparations, which was hosted last week by Barbados with the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC), was key for agreeing to a unified strategy to bring Britain to the negotiating table. Gonsalves is now an elder and adviser for the Repair Campaign, a social movement for reparatory justice.
He said that slavery happened over centuries and reparations had to be realistic and set over decades. “We need a concrete, multigenerational plan,” he said.
On the legal options available to the Caribbean, Gonsalves challenged arguments that Britain did not violate historical laws during transatlantic slavery, adding that the UK’s signature on contemporary UN conventions had established a binding legal obligation for reparative justice.
“The fact is that the consequences of slavery fall squarely under the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which obliges states to help address the consequences of native genocide and slavery,” Gonsalves said.
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