reparations for slavery

United Nations resolution

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 60/147 refers to measures to repair violations of human rights including restitution and compensation.

Types

Reparations can take numerous forms, including practical measures such as individual monetary payments; settlements; scholarships and other educational schemes; systemic initiatives to offset injustices; or land-based or housing-based compensation related to independence. Other types of reparations include apologies and acknowledgements of the injustices; the removal of monuments and renaming of streets that honour enslavers and defenders of slavery; or naming a building after an enslaved person or someone connected with abolition. Development aid is generally not counted as reparations. Some view financial reparations are insufficient, and demand as reparations for slavery opportunity to repatriate to country of origin before slavery and "bringing an end to the current political and economic system".

By region

Netherlands

In December 2022, the prime minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, apologised on behalf of the Dutch Government for its role in slavery at an event at the National Archives in The Hague, which included representatives of various advocacy organisations. It also pledged to give €200 million towards "raising awareness, fostering engagement and addressing the present-day effects of slavery", and is planning a commemoration of the history of slavery on 1 July 2023, along with Dutch Caribbean nations, Suriname, and other countries.

United Kingdom

By the 2010s examples of international reparations for slavery consisted of recognition of the injustice of slavery and apologies for involvement but no material compensation. In June 2023, the Brattle Group presented a report at an event at the University of the West Indies in which reparations were estimated, for harms both during and after the period of transatlantic chattel slavery at more than 100 trillion dollars. In October 2023, the UK Reparations Conference was held and a joint declaration issued to the effect that full reparatory justice must be "pursued and achieved".

The formal position of the British Government is that there is no intention to make any monetary payments in compensation for Britain's involvement in slavery or the slave trade. 60% of British people are opposed to the payment of reparations for slavery.

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom that achieved slave emancipation in most of the British Empire. It involved compensated emancipation, as the members of the House of Commons were very mindful of the rights of private property, believing that if an entirely legally held asset could be alienated from one class of person, it set a precedent for other property to be taken by government. The amount of compensation in the Bill presented to Parliament was calculated by civil servants in the belief that it would be considered excessive and reduced, but this did not happen. Slave owners, mortgagees and others with an appropriate financial interest were paid approximately £20 million in compensation in over 40,000 awards for enslaved people freed in the colonies of the Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape of Good Hope. This represented around 40 percent of the British Treasury's annual spending budget and has been calculated as equivalent to about £16.5bn in today's terms. Some of the payments were converted into 3.5% government annuities, which caused a drawn-out process.

The Act, formally 1 and 2 Vict. 3, was the world's major statute of "compensated emancipation". It empowered the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Dept to raise the £20 million by issuing government stocks, effective borrowing against future tax revenues to pay former enslaves for the loss of their property.

The Africa Reparations Movement, also known as ARM (UK), was formed in 1993 following the Abuja Proclamation declared at the First Pan-African Conference on Reparations in Abuja, Nigeria, in the same year. The conference was convened by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the Nigerian government.

United States

Slavery ended in the United States in 1865 with the end of the American Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". At that time, an estimated four million African Americans were set free.

There are instances of reparations for slavery, relating to the Atlantic slave trade, dating back to at least 1783 in North America, with a growing list of modern-day examples of reparations for slavery in the United States in 2020 as the call for reparations in the US has been bolstered by protests around police brutality and other cases of systemic racism in the US. The call for reparations for racism has also been made alongside calls for reparations for slavery.

Within the political sphere, a bill demanding slavery reparations has been proposed at the national level, the "Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act", which former Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI) reintroduced to the United States Congress every year from 1989 until his resignation in 2017. As its name suggests, the bill recommended the creation of a commission to study the "impact of slavery on the social, political and economic life of our nation"; however, there are cities and institutions that have initiated reparations in the US (see § Legislation and other actions for a list).

In 1999, African-American lawyer and activist Randall Robinson, founder of the TransAfrica advocacy organization, wrote that America's history of race riots, lynching, and institutional discrimination have "resulted in $1.4 trillion in losses for African Americans". Economist Robert Browne stated that, the ultimate goal of reparations should be to "restore the black community to the economic position it would have if it had not been subjected to slavery and discrimination". He estimates a fair reparation value anywhere between $1.4 to $4.7 trillion, or roughly $142,000 (equivalent to $193,000 in 2025) for every black American living today. Other estimates range from $5.7 to $14.2 and $17.1 trillion.

Opposition to slavery reparations is reflected in the general population. In a study conducted by YouGov in 2014, only 37% of Americans believed that enslaved people should have been provided compensation in the form of cash after being freed. Furthermore, only 15% believed that descendants of enslaved people should receive cash payments. The findings indicated a clear divide between black and white Americans. The study summarized its findings: "Only 6% of white Americans support cash payments to the descendants of slaves, compared to 59% of black Americans. Similarly, only 19% of whites – and 63% of blacks – support special education and job training programs for the descendants of slaves."

Caribbean

From the perspective of international law, it is questionable whether slavery, genocide, and other crimes against humanity had been outlawed at the time they were committed in the Caribbean; for example, "Although the factual appearance of genocide can be traced back at least to ancient times, its prohibition by international law appears to be a phenomenon of the early 20th century". Additionally, according to internationally established customs, a successor government is responsible for providing reparative justice.

Under the international principle of intertemporal law, today's prohibitions cannot be applied retroactively. There is a legal argument suggesting that, exceptions to intertemporal law apply in cases of crimes against humanity, as European states and their representatives could not expect slavery to be legal in the future (referred to as teleological reduction of the principle). However, it is a complex area of law.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM), established in 1973, is an intergovernmental organisation that is a political and economic union of 15 member states throughout the Caribbean. Until 1995, it comprised only the English-speaking parts of the Caribbean, until the addition of Suriname (Dutch) in 1995; Haiti and other non-Anglophone nations have since joined.

In 2013, in the first of a series of lectures in Georgetown, Guyana, to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the 1763 Berbice Slave Revolt, Principal of the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary Beckles urged the CARICOM countries to emulate the position adopted by the Jews who were persecuted during the Second World War and have since organized a Jewish reparations fund. Following Beckles' advice, the CARICOM Reparations Commission was created in September 2013. In 2014, 15 Caribbean nations unveiled the "CARICOM Ten Point Plan for Reparatory Justice", which spelled out demands for reparations from Europe ...for the enduring suffering inflicted by the Atlantic slave trade". Among these demands were formal apologies from all nations involved (as opposed to "statements of regret"), repatriation of displaced Africans to their homeland, programs to help Africans learn about and share their histories, and institutions to improve slavery descendants' literacy, physical health, and psychological health. Representatives of Caribbean states have repeatedly announced their intention to bring the issue to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Muslim world

Reparations for historical slavery in the Muslim world were proposed.

By region of origin of slaves

Africa

In 1999, the African World Reparations and Repatriation Truth Commission called for the West to pay $777 trillion (~$1.37 quadrillion in 2024) to Africa within five years.

In September 2001, the United Nations sponsored the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa. The Durban Review Conference sponsored a resolution stating that the West owed reparations to Africa due to the "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance" that the Atlantic slave trade caused. Leaders of several African nations supported this resolution. The former Minister of Justice of Sudan, Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin, stated that the slave trade is responsible for Africa's current problems.

President Cyril Ramaphosa supports reparations for slavery and the slave trade, marking the 20th anniversary of the Durban declaration.

A Global Reparation Fund was established by the African Union and Caricom at a conference in Ghana in November 2023. The President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, said at the conference that "The entire period of slavery meant that our progress, economically, culturally, and psychologically, was stifled. There are legions of stories of families who were torn apart ... You cannot quantify the effects of such tragedies, but they need to be recognised".