‘Address past head on’ – Sir Hilary on reparatory justice

Chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI) Sir Hilary Beckles says reparative justice was not about black people standing on the street corners expecting charities from white folks.

He was delivering a keynote address at the Harvard Law School recently on reparatory justice for Caribbean countries that facilitated the slave trade. Sir Hilary said that reparatory justice instead was about building bridges across lines of moral justice,and called on Western World Leaders to atone for their countries’ wrongdoing by investing in housing, education, health care, social justice, and infrastructure development in the Caribbean. He also said the best way to address the past was head on.

There’s no point in burying the legacy and memories…Let us bring everything to the surface and find a way forward through all of this,” said Sir Hilary.

He added that the “West will be on trial” until it made amends for the role its former colonies played in facilitating slavery.

CARICOM leaders, in 2013, appointed the Reparations Commission to establish a case for reparations and Sir Hilary made reference to the 10-point plan he has developed, alongside a Commission of Inquiry, to best “formulate a strategy for reparative justice to move the society forward.