REPARATIONS FOR NATIVE GENOCIDE AND AFRICAN SLAVERY BY [Type the document title] DR. THE HONOURABLE RALPH E. GONSALVES PRIME MINISTER OF ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES [Address to the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Washington, D.C., on November 04, 2015] Office of the Prime Minister St. Vincent and the Grenadines November 04, 2015 1 | P a g e REPARATIONS FOR NATIVE GENOCIDE AND AFRICAN SLAVERY BY DR. THE HON. RALPH E. GONSALVES PRIME MINISTER OF ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES [FORMAL GREETINGS] INTRODUCTION: AN OVERVIEW My address to this august body today revolves around the compelling subject of reparations for native genocide and African slavery from those European nations, mainly Britain, France, and Holland, which perpetrated these historic wrongs against humanity in the Caribbean during a period in excess of 200 years between the 17th and 19th centuries. The quest for reparations is not conceived as a strategic confrontation against these European nations, although it is for us in the Caribbean a defining issue in the 21st century for justice, reconciliation, and the righting of historic wrongs. 2 | P a g e The struggle for reparations in the Caribbean involves centrally a mature conversation with those European nations for an appropriate recompense to correct the legacies of underdevelopment occasioned by native genocide and African slavery. If this mature conversation does not yield a satisfactory result for Caribbean nations, we intend to take the matter to the International Court of Justice for adjudication within the framework of international law. Criss-crossing this mature engagement is the necessary and desirable diplomatic, political, and educational endeavour in our region, our hemisphere, and internationally. We are at an opportune moment for discourses on, and possible resolution of, the claim for reparations as part of the Post-2015 Development Dialogues, and in the context of the United Nations’ Declaration of the Decade of People of African Descent. It is an appropriate and convenient juncture for the engagement on reparations between the Caribbean and Europe to be facilitated as an especial carve-out in the Post-2015 Development Dialogues touching and concerning the 17 Sustainable Development Goals 3 | P a g e (SDGs) adopted recently in September 2015 at the United Nations’ General Assembly. The case for reparations is unanswerably strong. It rests on moral and legal grounds. It is not concerned with the search for the direct descendants of those who suffered from native genocide and African slavery, to be paid specific sums of money. It does not involve as a starting-point a quantification claim in today’s currency of the assessed value of every person subjected to native genocide or African slavery and the assessment of the lands stolen from the native population by Europeans. It is not about the representation in today’s value of the 20 million pounds sterling paid by the British government to the slave-owners in 1834-1838 in the Caribbean; incidentally, that sum in today’s value, multiplying by the objective factor of 839, amounts to 16.78 billion pounds sterling. To be sure, these quantification benchmarks are indicative of the extent of the recompense, and more, required as reparations to the Caribbean nations. However, our quest for reparations is about repairing the legacies of underdevelopment which exist today and 4 | P a g e which are undeniably traced to native genocide and African slavery. To this end, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has adopted a 10-point Reparations Agenda which covers the repairing of the awful material and psychological legacies of underdevelopment in a number of areas, including the economy, poverty reduction, education, health, housing, infrastructure, culture and memorials, the demand for a European apology for native genocide and African slavery, and the special matter of repatriation, voluntarily, to Africa of Rastafarians. This Agenda is envisaged as obtaining appropriate recompense, separate and distinct from the usual discretionary international aid granted bilaterally or multilaterally by European nations to the Caribbean. In seeking, thus far, to avoid an informed conversation on reparations the British government recites the mantra that it is interested in engaging the Caribbean with the future, not the past; but this assertion is grounded in a profound fallacy. The consequences or legacies of native genocide and African slavery are not matters of the past; they are a lived reality in today’s Caribbean. Repairing them is very much a matter for the present and the 5 | P a g e future. To amend the poetic summation of one of the iconic national poets of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the deceased Daniel Williams: “We are all time; only the future is ours to desecrate; the present is the past.” Indeed, “the past” has been shaped by the state-sponsored public policies of native genocide and African slavery, perpetrated by the respective European nations of which Britain was the most infamous in its extraction of wealth for itself and its impoverishment, and more, of native peoples and African slaves in the Caribbean. REPARATIONS: A PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL SKETCH The righting of historic wrongs is at the heart of the case for reparations for native genocide, lands “stolen”, and slavery. It is grounded in justice and fairness. It is to be recognised, too, that the Caribbean is not coming to the issue of reparations with a blank page. 6 | P a g e There have been several claims for reparatory justice which have been satisfied before international tribunals or settled within the ambit of international law, grounded in fairness and justice. Indeed, in August 2001, at the United Nations World Conference against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa, the then President of Cuba, Fidel Castro, addressed this matter, thus: “Cuba speaks of reparations, and supports the idea as an unavoidable moral duty to victims of racism, based on a major precedent, that is, the indemnification being paid to the descendants of the Hebrew people who in the very heart of Europe suffered the brutal and loathsome racist holocaust. However, it is not the intent to undertake an impossible search for the direct descendants of the specific countries of the victims of actions which occurred throughout centuries. 7 | P a g e “The irrefutable truth is that tens of millions of Africans were captured, sold like a commodity and sent beyond the Atlantic to work in slavery while seventy million indigenous people in the hemisphere perished as a result of European conquest and colonisation.” An international legal scholar, Mari J. Matsuda, [“Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations”, Harvard Civil Rights – Civil Liberties Review, 22, no. 323, 1987] correctly advises that a human injustice that attracts a claim of reparations must meet three basic criteria: “The injustice must be well-documented; the historical data setting out the specifics of the injustice should withstand scientific scrutiny and be verifiable to the satisfaction of a court or tribunal. “The victims must be identifiable as a distinct group. 8 | P a g e “The current members of the group must continue to suffer harm.” The political leaders in CARICOM are all satisfied that the historical data on native genocide and African slavery and the contemporary condition of the descendants of those who suffered from these crimes against humanity are such as to make a proper fit for these three criteria. The awful legacies of native genocide and African slavery are real; the terrible, many-sided scars of underdevelopment are before our very eyes, sourced to native genocide and African slavery. It is my duty to acknowledge that a bundle of legal arguments have been proffered by those who oppose reparations for native genocide and African slavery. These revolve around the doctrine of “relevant law and practice” at the time when the events giving rise to the claim of reparations, occurred; the idea of historical “remoteness” of these crimes against humanity; and the absence of the actual perpetrators of these crimes and the victims. But international law has more than adequate answers to each of these contrary legal 9 | P a g e arguments. In any event, this is not merely a legal issue; it is a profoundly moral one to be pursued through coordinated political and diplomatic efforts. My appearance here today at the OAS is part and parcel of this political and diplomatic exercise. This informed gathering is surely aware that the CARICOM member-states and the relevant European nations have signed and ratified relevant international conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which mandates that countries responsible for historical racism, genocide, and slavery have an obligation to assist in repairing the contemporary legacies of underdevelopment. The very 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance acknowledges that slavery and the transatlantic slave trade were “appalling tragedies in the history of humanity not only because of their abhorrent barbarism, but also in terms of their magnitude, organised nature and especially their negation of the essence of the victims”. CARICOM member-states and the relevant European nations ___ Britain, France, and Holland ___are also state-parties to the International Criminal Court of Justice 10 | P a g e (ICJ) which adjudicates on these matters within the frame of international law. Last year, CARICOM established a CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), to pursue the claim for reparations. Its Chairman is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, the distinguished Professor Hillary Beckles, and its Vice- Chairman is the esteemed Senator Jomo Thomas, an activist lawyer from St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Professor Hillary Beckles has authored a recently-published book of huge importance entitled Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations for Caribbean Slavery and Native Genocide.