Sub-Saharan Africa
Sputnik brings you all the most recent information, major events, heroes and views, including breaking news, images, videos, analyses, and features.

African & Caribbean Nations Focus on Slavery Reparations in International Summit

© Photo Twitter / @ViceColombia Reparations and Racial Healing Study Tour in Barbados
 Reparations and Racial Healing Study Tour in Barbados - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 28.07.2023
Subscribe
The event involved Jamaica's University of the West Indies (UWI), the Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the African Union, Barbados' government, the grant-making network Open Society Foundations and the Caribbean Pan African Network.
Representatives of a diverse array of African and Caribbean organizations met in the Barbados capital Bridgetown as part of a Reparations and Racial Healing Study Tour focused on advocating for reparations for slavery, the UWI statement said.
The meeting in Barbados included strategy sessions, knowledge-sharing dialogues, plenaries, and "critical reflection on addressing harms suffered within Africa and throughout the Diaspora," the university stressed.

"The study tour also significantly marks the beginning of an intercontinental campaign process advocating for reparations and healing on both the African and global stages," the statement said.

Participants comprised ambassadors and representatives of AU member countries and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) political and economic union.
According to David Comissiong, Barbados' Ambassador to the Caribbean Community, reparations are seen as a right to development, after European countries advanced at the cost of the "underdevelopment" of African and Caribbean countries.

"We see reparations in terms of the right to development [..] European countries develop themselves at the expense of the systematic underdevelopment of countries like Barbados, the Caribbean territories and the continent of Africa," Comissiong told Qatari media.

For his part, the African Union's official Youssouf Mandoha noted the crucial role of the summit to "recognize how slavery, colonialism and racism intersect and impact the lives of Black people around the world."
The event was also joined by Hilary Beckles, Chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, who, as the UWI noted in a statement, is an internationally recognized leader in the global reparations movement.
Mali Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop during an interview with RIA Novosti. - Sputnik Africa, 1920, 12.06.2023
Sub-Saharan Africa
Countries That 'Practiced Slavery or Colonization' Have no Lesson to Teach: Mali's Foreign Minister

The CARICOM Reparations Commission was established in 2013 to prepare a case for reparations for the region's indigenous peoples and descendants of Africans who were victims of crimes against humanity in the form of genocide, slavery, slave trade and racial apartheid, according to the body's website.

Last June, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley publicly called for Europe to pay reparations to enslaved countries.
Newsfeed
0