Slavery: the long history of reparations
President Nana Akufo-Addo revived the debate on reparations for victims of slavery earlier this week.
John MacDougall/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
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In 2021, the International Center for Research on Slavery and Post-Slavery brought together 14 researchers from around the world to list the attempts at material and financial reparations put in place since the end of slavery.
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Monday in Accra, at a summit devoted to the consequences of slavery, then Tuesday in messages on Twitter, Ghanaian President
Nana Akufo-Addo pleaded for reparations to be paid
to the African continent.
“
It is time that Africa, whose 20 million sons and daughters saw their freedoms reduced and were sold as slaves, also received reparations
”, wrote the head of state in particular.
If he considers that no amount of money will be able to repair the damage of the slave trade, Nana Akufo-Addo considers that it is up to the African Union to mobilize.
The question of reparations is not new, it arose at the same time as that of the abolition of slavery.
Thus, in 1865, in the United States, just after abolition, a military order provided for the confiscation of 1,600 km2 of land along the Atlantic coast.
Each freed slave must receive 16 hectares.
Strong opposition from white elites is blocking the process.
Also in the United States, the JP Morgan bank, whose capital is partly derived from slavery, must, following the passage of a law in 2005, finance scholarships for black students in the city of Chicago.
In the United Kingdom, universities also offer aid to students from the Caribbean.
Not a penny in court
In Jamaica, since 2009, a commission has been set up to examine the means of providing reparations: transfer of powers to facilitate development, cancellation of debt.
So far, state inquiries have yielded nothing.
In Colombia, another strategy, black communities do not demand money, but defend access to land and education.
In France, the Taubira law adopted in 2001 recognizes slavery as a crime against humanity, but not all formal demands for reparations have been retained in the text adopted by the National Assembly.
The complaints filed, for example in 2013 by the Cran, the Representative Council of Black Associations in France, against the State and the Caisse des dépôts, accused of complicity in crimes against humanity, have not been successful.
All over the world, the movements fighting for reparations have never obtained a single cent from a State through the judicial process.
For historian Giulia Bonacci, research fellow at the Institute of Research for Development, the debate on reparations linked to slavery is obviously political.
What is new is to see a president in office clearly laying down the terms of the debate and inviting discussion.
Giulia Bonacci, research fellow at the Institute of Research for Development
Guillaume Thibault
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