The UN Human Rights Office released a report Wednesday focusing on reparations for people of African descent in response to the continuing effects of slavery and colonialism. The UN report floats a “multipronged approach” to address the legacies of slavery and colonialism, which includes the possibility of providing monetary reparations for the descendants of enslaved and colonized peoples.
In the report, the UN highlights that 25 to 30 million people were taken from Africa and enslaved. Despite the fact that slavery and slave trading are now prohibited under international human rights law, the report points out that Africans and people of African descent are still suffering from systemic racial discrimination. The UN stresses that although there is a trend in states willing to apologize and address the tragedies of the colonial era, “no states had comprehensively accounted for the past and addressed its contemporary legacies and ongoing manifestations.”
The report provides three recommendations that states should adopt to ensure that reparatory justice is embedded in the construction of truly inclusive, equal societies that are free from racism and discrimination.
The first recommendation is to ensure that people of African descent can effectively participate in guiding the design and implementation of reparatory justice measures. The UN believes that effective participation by affected groups can ensure adequate consideration of their needs and lived experiences.
The second is to adopt an intersectional, gender-sensitive and inclusive approach. The report highlights the need to address gender-related dimensions of racial discrimination, as recognized in the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Intersectionality theory holds that the interconnected nature of social categorizations (race and gender in this case) creates their own unique experience of discrimination and oppression. Thus, the UN recommends that reparation initiatives account not only for different types of discrimination, but also for how those forms of discrimination interact with each other.
Lastly, reparation measures must also comprise different forms, including “compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.” The report suggests several measures, such as promoting academic research in the truth-seeking and truth-telling process, making public apologies and acknowledgement of the nature, scale, duration and impact of the harm inflicted, commemorating victims, and compensating economically assessable damages proportional to the gravity of harms suffered.
The idea of reparations has often been subject to debates on whether and how governments should make reparations for slavery. For instance, a Pew Research Centre survey shows a polarized view of reparations in the US, with aggregate responses differing by respondent race. However, in June, the Task Force to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans issued its final report to the California Legislature, detailing systemic racism and its suggestions on reparations for African Americans. The UN favorably cited the proposal in its report, pointing out that it includes varied methods to address the history of enslavement and colonialism that go beyond financial compensation, including “memorialization” and “structural measures.”
Following the release of this report, the UN human rights chief Volker Türk said, “It is high time reparatory justice is made a priority, to address one of the biggest injustices in human history, and one that continues to negatively impact the daily lives of people of African descent across the globe.“
