The chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) Sir Hilary Beckles, will lead a six-member delegation on a ‘groundbreaking visit’ to the United Kingdom, the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat announced on Friday.
It said that the four-day visit will begin on November 17 and is intended to ‘advance its advocacy for reparatory justice. ‘The delegation’s mission is to strengthen strategic partnerships and promote a joint programme of public education and engagement on the reparations agenda,’ the Secretariat said, adding that the visit is being organised with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, which will host the delegation’s meetings and events.
Apart from Sir Hilary, who is also the Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies (UWI), the other members of the delegation are Eric Phillips, the chairman of the Guyana Reparations Committee; Ambassador David Comissiong, the Barbados Ambassador to CARICOM and vice chair of the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations; Dr. Niambi Hall Campbell, chairperson of the Bahamas National Reparations Committee; Arley Gill the chairman of the Grenada National Reparations Committee and Dr. Hilary Brown, Programme Manager, Culture and Community Development at the CARICOM Secretariat.
‘This marks the first official visit by the CRC to the UK as a collective body. The itinerary includes high-level engagements with High Commissioners and Ambassadors from CARICOM member states and the African Union, UK Parliamentarians, including members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations, civil society leaders, academics, media professionals, and members of the Caribbean diaspora,’ the Secretariat said.
‘The visit underscores the CRC’s commitment to building international alliances and fostering dialogue around reparatory justice, historical accountability, and socio-economic transformation,’ it added.
The CRC is a regional body created to establish the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparations by the governments of all the former colonial powers and the relevant institutions of those countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community for the Crimes against Humanity of Native Genocide, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and a racialized system of chattel slavery.