Reparations activists meeting next week in Barbados

Barbados will host a major international conference on reparations next week.

Organisers said activists from around the world will be in the island working on the roadmap for reparations during the Global Afrikan Congress International Conference on Reparations from Thursday, August 4 to Saturday August 6, at the Roy Marshall Teaching Complex on the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies. .

“Under the theme, ‘Sankofa: Globalising our Demands for Reparations”, the conference is supported by the Barbados Task Force on Reparations, UWI Cave Hill, and the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc.

“The conference will examine achievements in reparations around the world, discuss the legal options and approaches for reparatory justice approaches and identifying ways in which reparations can be paid,” a news release from the organisers stated.

“The Conference is also intended to encourage all pan-Africanist organisations, especially ones formed since 2010 to recognise the importance of reparatory justice, as well as encourage black people around the world to double their efforts to mobilise in the fight for reparations.”

Organisers said they hope the conference will also engage, politicise and mobilise young people in the pursuit of reparatory justice.

“One major outcome of the conference is the development of a 10-year Reparations Action Plan in a partnership between the Caricom Reparations Commission, the United States and European reparations movements, and other reparations organisations aimed at campaigning for full compensation from the beneficiaries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade for descendants of the enslaved,” the news release stated.

The Global Afrikan Congress (GAC) is an international network of Pan-Afrikanist and Afrikan-centred organisations and individuals who are committed to building linkages and genuine permanent relationships across the Afrikan world.
This conference comes 20 years after the GAC was established in Barbados, and 21 years after the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action in which 168 United Nations member states declared that the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the enslavement of Afrikans was a crime against humanity.

The GAC International Conference on Reparations is part of the programme for the Season of Emancipation in the island.

(PR/AR)