The historian and chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission unveiled a ten-point strategy at the Third Regional Conference, framing the push for justice as humanity’s shared responsibility.
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At the Third CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations held Thursday evening at the Wyndham Grand Sam Lord’s Castle, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, announced that the regional movement for reparatory justice has reached what he termed its final phase. Speaking to assembled delegates, Beckles presented a revised ten-point plan and declared that this represents the fifth historical eruption of the reparations movement—one fundamentally different from its predecessors because it will not be allowed to fade.
Beckles grounded his argument in historical specificity. He noted that Barbados received more than 600,000 imported Africans during slavery, yet only 83,000 remained at the time of Emancipation in 1834—a survival rate below 20 percent. Jamaica experienced similar devastation: 1.5 million imported Africans were reduced to just 300,000 by Emancipation. Beckles characterized this demographic collapse as genocide, not merely slavery, and pointed to the Caribbean as the birthplace of chattel slavery itself—a legal invention that classified human beings as non-human property based on racial identification, a distinction he said no other group in human history has endured.
A significant revision to the reparations framework centers the specific experiences of enslaved women. Beckles emphasized that slavery’s legal architecture was constructed around the enslavement of Black women, whose reproductive capacity was itself enslaved to ensure slavery’s perpetuation across generations. This gendered dimension of slavery created a demographic reality unique in the Western Hemisphere: Barbados became the first society where women outnumbered men, a majority that has persisted for over 300 years.
Beyond historical accounting, Beckles reframed the reparations struggle within a universal moral framework grounded in the African philosophy of Ubuntu—”I am because we are.” He argued that the Caribbean’s pursuit of justice carries responsibility to all humanity, positioning reparatory justice as essential to global security and the prevention of future atrocities against any group. He cited the March 25 UN General Assembly resolution, in which 123 member states voted to declare the transatlantic slave trade the “gravest crime against humanity,” as evidence that the moral and historical case has been established at the highest international level.
Jasmine Mickens, director of the Global Africa Reparations and Restitution Fund and master of ceremonies, characterized the CARICOM campaign as the defining political movement of the twenty-first century, crediting Beckles with providing both intellectual leadership and political imagination to a movement she described as fundamentally about imagining new worlds and determining whose version of the future will prevail.
The CARICOM Reparations Commission has spent a decade developing and refining its framework for reparatory justice, drawing on public discourse, intellectual critique, and empirical historical research. The Third Regional Conference represents a milestone in the campaign’s evolution, with the revised ten-point plan incorporating new scholarship and perspectives, particularly regarding the gendered dimensions of slavery and its lasting demographic consequences across the Caribbean.
This story is central to Caribbean identity and future. The reparations movement directly affects all Caribbean nations and diaspora communities, addressing the historical foundations of contemporary economic inequality, demographic patterns, and social structures. The framework articulated by Beckles—positioning reparations as a moral imperative for global justice—carries implications for how Caribbean peoples understand their historical agency and their role in shaping global human rights discourse.
Written & Edited by Orlyn Edwards. Published by Caribbean Air Force Media.
Category: History · Island routing: Barbados