Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, said the regional movement for reparatory justice has entered its final phase, with the present generation determined to pursue what it considers full justice.
In a speech to open the Third CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations at the Wyndham Grand Sam Lord’s Castle on Thursday evening, the prominent historian unveiled CARICOM’s revised ten-point plan, framing the struggle not merely as a regional demand for historical recompense, but as a global imperative to protect the future of humanity.
Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission Sir Hilary Beckles (RR)
Reflecting on the centuries-long history of resistance across the Caribbean, Sir Hilary outlined how the current campaign represents the fifth historical “eruption” of the reparations movement. Earlier waves — ranging from enslaved individuals demanding compensation for their stolen labour to post-Emancipation petitions for land — were routinely suppressed or allowed to subside.
“This century is going to be the century of impartial justice,” Sir Hilary declared to the assembled delegates. “Historically the reparations debate crescendoed, declined, crescendoed and declined. We are now in the fifth wave, and our position is this is it. There will be no other rise and fall. This is the final eruption of this movement, and we are not going to retreat and let it go into a slumber for the next generation.”
Addressing the historical foundation of the regional claim, Sir Hilary said European powers subjected the Caribbean to an unprecedented level of economic extraction and human degradation. He noted that the region was the testing ground for chattel slavery — a legal device that classified human beings as non-human property — and pointed to demographic figures illustrating systemic genocide.
“Chattel slavery was invented in the Caribbean for a specific purpose,” Sir Hilary explained. “It was the first time in human history that an ethnic group of people, racially identified, were classified in law as property, as non-human. No other race on this planet has ever been classified in law as non-human property, chattel, and real estate.”
Citing historical data from Barbados and Jamaica, Sir Hilary illustrated the scale of human loss. More than 600 000 Africans were brought to Barbados during slavery, yet only 83 000 remained at the time of Emancipation in 1834 — a survival rate of under 20 per cent. Similarly, in Jamaica, 1.5 million imported Africans yielded a population of just 300 000 by Emancipation.
“How do you reduce 600 000 people over 200 years to 83 000? That is also a definition of genocide. So we need to understand it was not only chattel slavery, but genocide. Why? Because it was opportunity — you burn it up, you use it, and you replace it.”
Sir Hilary also detailed the historical eradication of the region’s indigenous populations, saying that when British forces arrived in Barbados in 1655, they encountered an island filled with villages but void of inhabitants due to prior raids by Spanish and Portuguese forces.
The revised ten-point plan is the product of a decade of public, intellectual and empirical critique. Sir Hilary said one of the most substantial revisions involves centring the specific, gendered horrors experienced by enslaved women.
“Chattel slavery was an institution that was built on the existence of Black women. The laws of slavery were built around and framed around centering the Black woman as the seed of slavery. It was her womb that was enslaved. It was the enslavement of the Black woman that enabled slavery to go from generation to generation because the laws were clear: only an enslaved woman can give birth to a slave child.”
He said this demographic reality led to Barbados becoming the first society in the Western Hemisphere where women outnumbered men — a demographic majority that has persisted for more than 300 years.
“We can no longer speak about slavery in generic, neutral terms,” he said. “The experiences of Black women were fundamentally different from those of men.”
Beyond addressing historical atrocities, the revised document shifts towards a universal moral framework grounded in the African philosophy of Ubuntu — “I am because we are.” Sir Hilary said the regional pursuit of justice carries a wider duty to safeguard global security and prevent the future degradation of any group of people.
“We have a higher responsibility to the world. We are not struggling for reparatory justice only because of our personal ethnic situation; we have a duty to humanity. Justice for us, security for humanity — that is the framework.”
A total of 123 UN member states voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade the “gravest crime against humanity” on March 25 – proof that the moral and historical case for reparations has been established, he argued.
He declared: “The case for reparatory justice has been made. The United Nations is the court; they have said the case is made, the guilt is clear, the responsibility is clear. Let the negotiations begin.”
Following Sir Hilary’s speech, master of ceremonies Jasmine Mickens, director of the Global Africa Reparations and Restitution Fund described the CARICOM campaign as the single greatest political movement of the 21st century.
“Movements require both political imagination and unapologetic intellectual leadership, which Professor Beckles has always provided,” Mickens said. “Reparations is a conversation about the imagination of new worlds. It is a project of both preserving memory, but also deciding whose version of the future do we want to live in.” (RR)
