Prime Minister Gaston Browne has urged Caribbean leaders to continue pursuing reparatory justice, saying the region’s campaign is about securing justice rather than seeking financial assistance from former colonial powers.
Addressing the 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM, Browne said reparations are a matter of restitution for the lasting effects of the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery.
He told leaders that CARICOM’s position was based on justice and legal responsibility, stressing that the region was “not seeking handouts” but pursuing restitution for crimes against humanity.
Browne commended Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley for her leadership of CARICOM’s Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations and called on member states to maintain momentum on the issue.
He said international recognition of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity had strengthened the legal and moral case for reparations. While discussions with former colonial powers should remain respectful and constructive, he insisted reparations must remain a priority for the regional bloc.
The Antigua and Barbuda leader also updated Heads of Government on discussions surrounding the communiqué for the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, noting that reparations will feature in the document and that foreign ministers will continue negotiations on the issue.
Browne welcomed the CARICOM Reparations Commission’s new manifesto, describing it as an important tool for explaining the legal and ethical basis for reparations. He encouraged its widespread distribution across the region to improve public understanding of the movement.
He also reiterated support for CARICOM seeking an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, saying it would help clarify the legal responsibility linked to slavery and reinforce that reparations are a matter of justice, not charity.
Browne ended by reaffirming Antigua and Barbuda’s commitment to advancing CARICOM’s reparations agenda and supporting the implementation of the bloc’s Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice.
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The debate on Caribbean reparations must be grounded in historical truth, not historical ambiguity.
There is no dispute that European colonial powers committed genocide against the indigenous Arawak and Carib peoples through conquest, violence, disease, and displacement. That crime deserves full recognition and remembrance.
However, the transatlantic slave trade was a distinct crime against humanity. The men, women, and children who were kidnapped, marched to the coast, crammed into slave ships, and transported across the Middle Passage were Africans—not Arawaks or Caribs.
More than 12 million Africans were forcibly embarked on slave ships. Millions more died during raids on their villages, brutal forced marches, imprisonment in slave forts, or from disease, starvation, violence, and abuse during the Middle Passage. Countless women and girls were raped. Families were torn apart. Human beings were bought, sold, branded, whipped, and reduced to property. Their names, languages, cultures, and identities were systematically stripped away in one of history’s greatest crimes against humanity.
Yet, where are the annual acts of remembrance that honour the millions of African victims? Where is the same level of public recognition for those whose lives ended in the Atlantic Ocean or whose suffering laid the economic foundations of European and American prosperity?
If reparations are being pursued, then honesty demands that we identify clearly the injustice being addressed and the people on whose behalf the claim is made. The genocide of the indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans were connected by colonialism, but they were not the same historical event. Each deserves to be acknowledged in its own right, and each deserves justice on its own historical merits.
History should never be simplified for the sake of convenience. Justice begins with historical precision, because without truth there can be no meaningful reconciliation, and without recognition there can be no genuine reparative justice.
Whether the Caribbean actually believes Britain will pay largely depends on how “payment” is defined. Direct cash payout from the British government anytime is highly unlikely in the short-to-medium to long term. Developmental restitution seem more likely though and even that might be far fetched.. That includes debt cancellation, technology transfers, investments in regional healthcare and education, and targeted funding for indigenous communities. The British Government is themselves experiencing economic difficulty and that in itself make any form of restitution difficult.
It find it funny that the people who sold the slaves to the Europeans and Arabs always seem to be exempt from any sort of condemnation. Those people being the Africans who captured our ancestors.
Also I don’t hear anyone seeking justice from the Arabs whose slave trade lasted over a thousand years and was far worst than the Transatlantic one.
GASTON BROWNE,ARE YOU LOOKING FOR A WINDFALL? TO HELP PAY DOWN ALL OF THE DAMN LOANS YOU HAVE PUT THIS NATION THROUGH. NO EASY MONEY FOO YOU.
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