CaribbeanLife | Friday, July 11, 2025 
CARICOM throws support behind Jamaica’s reparation efforts

Caribbean Community leaders say they have backed a Jamaican initiative to take the regional reparations fight to the United Kingdom via a ruling from Britain’s highest court. The idea, the initiative of the Jamaican cabinet and reparations commission, is to ask the Privy Council to rule and determine whether slavery and the forced transport of enslaved Africans to Jamaica and other territories were legal and whether it had amounted to a criminal act and a crime against humanity. After briefing reporters after the regional leaders’ meeting in Jamaica’s tourism capital town of Montego Bay this week, Prime Minister Andrew Holness said the other bloc member states are on board. The announcement comes at a time when the region’s effort to get former European slave trading nations to listen to regional pleas and requests to commence talks on reparations appeared to have been flagging in recent months, but Holness says things are about to change. “I’m pleased to report that there was broad support for Jamaica moving forward with a petition to King Charles III, in his capacity as Jamaica’s Head of State, to seek a formal ruling from the Privy Council on whether the Atlantic enslavement of Africans was lawful under common law and whether local laws supporting it were invalid,” he said. Holness also noted that the umbrella Caribbean Reparations Commission (CRC) also has a similar legal initiative linked to broader development issues, noting that ….Learn more