As calls for reparations grow louder, advocates say a renewed wave of Pan-Africanism is uniting Africa and the Caribbean in the push for justice and historical accountability.
Programme Manager of Culture and Community Development at the CARICOM Secretariat, Dr Hilary Brown, says these discussions are being held at a time when there’s a renaissance of Pan-Africanism.
Speaking at the Emancipation Support Committee’s Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, she said Africa and the Caribbean diaspora have taken up the fight on economic dependency, unfair trade systems, resource exploitation, and the lingering wounds of enslavement and colonialism.
“To me, this renaissance of Pan-Africanism has been demonstrated in the way in which the Global Reparations Movement has been growing and strengthening as the African Union, CARICOM, North, South, Central America have been coming together to call for reparations for centuries of genocide of the indigenous people of the region and the horrors of the trafficking of enslaved Africans through the Middle Passage and chattel enslavement in the Caribbean and the Americas for over four hundred years.”
Reflecting on the birth of Pan-Africanism, scholar and historian Dr Claudius Fergus gave an overview of the Caribbean’s role in its genesis.
“Armed resistance was pivotal to the rise of Pan-Africanism, and the Caribbean was the primary incubator. A major challenge was, and remains, how do you effectively fight an enemy that is united by race consciousnesses, without yourself having a common identity or common philosophy of race consciousness. In the hostile plantation environment, it was inevitable that enslaved Africans had to evolve new sentences of communication, of identity, of values and of purpose.”
Dr Brown highlighted the recent adoption by the United Nations of the declaration recognising the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crimes against humanity.
She noted that 54 members of the African Union and 13 Caribbean states all voted in favour.
“We actually constitute more than a third of the United Nations, so at any point that we really get together and decide that we are going to collaborate and stand in solidarity with each other on a position, there is a lot that we can move and change within the UN.”
The UN General Assembly adopted the landmark resolution on March 25th, 2026, with 123 countries voting in favour, three voting against, and 52 abstaining.
The resolution was spearheaded by Ghana.