Image @Kyle Glenn
Calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism are gaining ground globally, with new momentum coming from both the Caribbean and Africa, backed by legal and political strategies aimed at former colonial powers in Europe.
Last week, lobbying efforts reached Westminster, where the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Africans Reparations, comprising UK MPs and peers, hosted an independent delegation of Caribbean researchers and activists.
They are demanding formal apologies and reparative justice for slavery and colonialism.
Among those who met the delegation in London were MPs Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler, Paulette Hamilton, Juliet Campbell, Lady Margaret Curran, and Lord Marvin Rees.
The visit came shortly after the Jamaican government revealed plans to ask King Charles to request legal advice from the UK Privy Council on slavery reparations. This legal step is considered a major shift in the global campaign.
Labor MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, chair of the APPG, said the Westminster meeting “made it very clear that reparations were not a fringe issue” dominated by British activists, but a matter of global significance. She added: “I think it’s important that people are moving forward with legal remedies, because ultimately enslavement was ended with the law, the reparations to slave owners happened under the law, and so reparations to those affected must happen under legislation.”
The lobbying was organized by the Repair Campaign, an independent group funded by Irish telecoms billionaire Denis O’Brien.
According to O’Brien, “We’ve gone to government departments in the Caribbean and said, ‘what would you do if you had the budget to transform your country?’ And they’ve talked about land rights, justice, education, health service, culture and memorialization, judicial reform and human rights and debt cancellation.”
He said the plans, tailored to the specific needs of Caribbean countries, are based on consultations with groups such as “Heirs of Slavery, Indigenous communities, Jamaican Maroons and Rastafarians.”
The Repair Campaign aligned these country-specific plans with Caricom’s 10-point plan for reparatory justice.
O’Brien added that the European Union and the British government should each fund 50% of the plan, “because they’re both equally culpable.”
While Jamaica waits on a response from King Charles, the country’s deputy reparations chair Bert Samuels said, “If King Charles, who is part of the monarchy that benefited from slavery, refuses to refer the issue or if the privy council does not come back giving ‘positive recognition to the three questions’ there would be a global ‘avalanche of criticism’ of Britain.”
Samuels pointed to the 2020 toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol during anti-racism protests as evidence of an across-the-board rejection for the celebration of the slave trade, no matter how long ago it was.
He warned that if Jamaica does not find justice in Britain’s legal system, “Jamaica may take the matter to the international courts.”
Meanwhile, in Africa, the African Union has elevated the reparations movement to one of its central policy goals for 2025. At the AU’s 38th Summit in February, member states launched the theme: “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.”
According to a roadmap published by the AU, the initiative foresees the operationalisation of new frameworks and mechanisms, including an AU Secretariat for Reparations acting as a focal point for the AU’s reparations efforts, a Committee of Legal Experts to provide legal guidance on reparatory justice claims, and a Global Reparations Fund to serve as an advocacy platform.
AU Assembly Decision 884 has elevated reparations to the status of Flagship Issue and Project of the Union, placing it on par with the continent’s other major development programs under Agenda 2063.
Nigeria, which hosted the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations in 1993, has endorsed the creation of a UN-led international tribunal on transatlantic slavery, modelled after ad hoc courts such as the Nuremberg trials.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has spoken in favor of the UN putting reparations on its agenda.
In the Sahel, reparations are increasingly tied to broader political and anti-colonial sentiments.
In Niger, where a military junta came to power in 2023, junta leader Abdurahmane Tchiani called on “France to pay compensation for ‘over a century of colonial and neo-colonial plundering.”
The push extends to Senegal, where President Bassirou Diomaye Faye announced plans to rename public spaces bearing the names of French national figures and urged France to take full responsibility, make an official apology, and launch investigations into the so-called ‘Thiaroye massacre.
The massacre, which occurred in 1944 when West African soldiers protesting unpaid wages were killed by the French army, remained unacknowledged for decades.
A first acknowledgement that the event constituted a massacre was made at the end of 2024 in a private letter by French President Emmanuel Macron to Faye himself.
The African Union is also looking outward. Its roadmap includes the establishment of a partnership framework with CARICOM, and organizing an Africa-Diaspora summit, involving representatives of African origin living outside the continent, and a high-level event at the UN General Assembly.
While African states and Caribbean governments are aligning their positions, European responses have been mixed.
France returned 26 artefacts to Benin and one to Senegal after President Emmanuel Macron said “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.”
Other European countries, including the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands, returned some of the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.
But many African leaders and experts say these symbolic acts fall short.
The 2018 Sarr-Savoy report, commissioned by Macron, found that “an estimated 90% of sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural heritage remains housed outside the continent.”
Legal experts also continue to debate how to calculate the value of reparations.
According to the article, “Estimates of the damages caused by transatlantic slavery alone vary widely, from the $100-131 trillion suggested by the 2021 Brattle Group report to the $777 trillion proposed by the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission in 1999.”
Although direct financial compensation remains rare, pressure is increasing. The AU and Caricom are pushing ahead with diplomacy, legal routes, and global campaigning.
By: Joshua Narh