Newsletter 09/26 - CARICOM restarts on reparations

From 19 to 21 February 2025 the forty-eighth Summit of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community was held in Bridgetown, Barbados, with the participation of about twenty delegations. Finally after a few years of stagnation during the conference support for the request for reparations was reiterated with the renewal of the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations chaired by Barbados and comprising Guyana, Haiti, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname.

From 24 to 27 February 2026 the fiftieth Summit of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community was held in Basseterre, Saint Kitts and Nevis, with the participation of about twenty delegations. During the conference they tasked the Prime Ministerial Sub-Committee on Reparations with reviewing the Caribbean reparatory justice Program.

On June 17, 2026 the first meeting of the Joint Mechanism on Reparatory Justice, comprising the African Union Committee of Experts on Reparations (AUCER), the African Union Reference Group of Legal Experts on Reparations (AULER) and the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC), was held and has decided to meet regularly from now on.

From 5 to 8 July 2026 the fifty-first Summit of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community was held in Gros Islet, Saint Lucia, with the participation of about twenty delegations. During the conference the Heads of Government approved the revision of the CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparations: A Manifesto for the Coming Enlightenment and the program of upcoming initiatives, with the staging of the third Regional Conference on Reparations from 17 to 19 September 2026, the unveiling of the Newton Enslaved Burial Ground Memorial in Barbados in November 2026 and support the filing by Jamaica of a Reparations Petition to its King Charles III.

Colonialism Reparation supports the request of the members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) for reparations for the genocide of the native people and the slavery and calls on the former colonizers (United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark etc.) to apologize and pay compensations for the colonial period without being forced to appear before a court.