Caribbean countries poised to seek UN Legal Advice on Slavery Compensation

Caribbean Countries Poised To Seek UN Legal Advice On Slavery Compensation

Tue, Jul 25, 2023

The prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, Ralph Gonsalves, also the leader of the Celac States, said Rishi Sunak should have a greater sensitivity to reparative justice.

Caribbean countries are considering approaching the UN’s international court of justice (ICJ) for a legal opinion on demanding compensation from 10 European countries over slavery, as the fight for reparative justice is stepped up, the president of the group of 33 nations in the region has said.

Ralph Gonsalves, the current leader of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), said he was also looking for an apology from the British government and expressed disappointment in Rishi Sunak’s lack of engagement in the matter.

“I’m disappointed to see that Sunak, who ought to, given his origins, have a greater sensitivity to this question of the past,” said Gonsalves, who has been prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines for 22 years. Sunak’s parents were of Indian origin and raised in British colonies in east Africa.

“I’d like an apology from the British government and the engagement for a mature conversation for a programme for reparatory justice,” Gonsalves said.
He said reparative justice was not just a crude calculation about monetary compensation for descendants of enslaved people but a wider recognition of the continuing effects of slavery and colonisation on public health, economic development and cultural heritage.

He failed to persuade the EU leaders at a summit with the Celac leaders in Brussels to include a paragraph in an official communique recognising native genocide, the elimination of Indigenous peoples through colonisation. But he said he accepted that not all European countries were involved in colonisation.
“This is not a case of looking for people with the DNA who were enslaved. No, we are dealing with the historical legacies of the enslavement of [Africans] and there are contemporary manifestations on the development linked directly to slavery and indeed, to native genocide,” he said.

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