The Repair Campaign – Join us in Amplifying Caribbean Voices Calling for Reparations
Source: Gabrielle Miller
The Repair Campaign – About Us:https://repaircampaign.org/
The Repair Campaign is a social movement for reparatory justice in the Caribbean, guided by the CARICOM Reparations Commission. Genocide, slavery and colonialism inflicted deep and enduring damage on the people of the Caribbean while providing significant financial benefits to the colonisers. Our goal is to amplify Caribbean voices calling for reparations and get former colonial powers to commit to a long-term reparatory fund.
The Goal
The overall goal of The Repair Campaign is to commit former colonial countries, institutions, and families to a long-term 25-year investment-funding plan to be disbursed in 5-year tranches for the region. This plan focuses on priority areas like education, health, infrastructure, and climate change, among others, to effect sustainable and transformative change for the region.
Doing the Work
Little over a year since its inception, The Repair Campaign has been making big moves as it seeks to amplify the call for former colonial powers to acknowledge their role in the transatlantic slave trade and commit to a long-term reparatory fund.
Guided by the CARICOM Reparations Commission and its 10-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, two teams of Rapporteurs visited all 15 CARICOM member states and met with more than 280 stakeholders. These included, but were not limited to, members of the country’s Reparations Committee, Prime Ministers and Government ministers, opposition members, church leaders, civil society, the Rastafarian community, youth and Indigenous groups.
These conversations highlighted the ongoing impact of colonialism and the intergenerational trauma and legacies that are felt even today in areas like health, education, crime and so many others.
In parallel, under the guidance of Sir Hilary Beckles, Repair is working with The University of West Indies through the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Research (SALISES) and The Centre for Reparation Research to prepare Socioeconomic Reparatory Plans for all CARICOM Member States.
These plans will offer a detailed analysis of slavery and colonisation in each country, an assessment of socio-economic and cultural damage inflicted, and culminate in a short list of suggested interventions for financial reparations. They will create qualifiable monetary asks for each country, based on up-to-date statistics and measures such as GDP, employment patterns, poverty and various other social indicators.
Pilot plans have been completed for Jamaica, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Guyana, and Repair is now in the process of scoping and costing the identified priority areas with a third-party agency of economists.
Alongside the work in the Caribbean, Repair has also begun engaging key United Kingdom and EU decision-makers. As part of this, with UK MP Clive Lewis (of Grenadian descent), we are creating an office where we will lobby all political parties and relevant civil society organisations on reparatory justice for the Caribbean. This work will initially focus on activating the diaspora, political leaders of Caribbean descent, and families and institutions who have benefited from slavery in the UK, and then also in the EU.
Join the Movement
If you are interested in receiving regular updates on The Repair Campaign, then please visit the website to sign up for our newsletter, and come with us on the journey via our social media pages.
Follow the movement on social media:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/repaircampaign/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/RepairCampaign
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/RepairCampaign
Quotes
“The Repair Campaign is designed to diversify, deepen and ultimately to widen the Caribbean Reparatory Justice Movement. It is both timely and welcomed. It is anticipated that the results will be impactful. The focus on economic development as the object of reparations is consistent with the CARICOM perspective.” – Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Chairman, CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice-Chancellor, University of the West Indies
“The CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) welcomes the solidarity and support of The Repair Campaign in the struggle for human rights and justice – Reparations now!” – Dr. Hilary Brown, Programme Manager, Culture and Community Development, CARICOM Secretariat
“Having spent over two decades in the Caribbean working with various organisations, I’ve come to understand how the legacy of slavery and colonialism continues to inflict damage on the people and the landscape of the Caribbean. I have seen and heard how present-day issues such as public health crises, for example, diabetes and hypertension, lack of access to education and generational trauma are directly linked to former colonial powers over-exploiting and significantly depleting Caribbean countries.
Moved and humbled by these stories, I feel strongly about supporting the CARICOM Reparations Commission’s call for reparatory justice. We aim to amplify this work that has been done by Caribbean groups over many generations.
This has included Rapporteur teams visiting all 15 CARICOM countries and meeting with various Government ministers, opposition leaders, civil society organisations and more. Informed by these experiences, the Repair team and I believe socioeconomic reparatory justice is a matter of urgency and echo the calls to combine regional development with reparations to heal and prosper socially, psychologically and economically. Together with the University of West Indies, and under the guidance of Sir Hilary Beckles, we aim to deliver country-specific plans detailing areas intended for socioeconomic reparations.” – Denis O’Brien, Founder, The Repair Campaign