Caribbean nations are drawing up a multi-pronged \u201caction plan\u201d with legal options to push the UK into negotiating a decades-long slavery reparations deal, officials at a reparations conference have said.<\/p>\n
Leaders in the region are hoping the UK would agree to targeted and constructive negotiation talks at upcoming Commonwealth and UN summits, but they are ready to take the matter to international courts if Britain continues to resist diplomatic options.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Andy Burnham<\/a> reiterated the British government\u2019s long\u2011held position that \u201cthe UK does not and will not pay reparations\u201d.<\/p>\n Ralph Gonsalves, the former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines, said the Caricom Regional Conference on Reparations<\/a>, which took place this week, hosted by Barbados with the Caricom Reparations Commission (CRC), was key for agreeing a unified strategy to bring Britain to the negotiating table. Gonsalves is now an elder and adviser for the Repair Campaign<\/a>, a social movement for reparatory justice.<\/p>\n He said that slavery happened over centuries and reparations had to be realistic and set over decades. \u201cWe need a concrete, multigenerational plan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n On the legal options available to the Caribbean, Gonsalves challenged arguments that Britain did not violate historical laws during transatlantic slavery, adding that the UK\u2019s signature on contemporary UN conventions had established a binding legal obligation for reparative justice.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact is that the consequences of slavery fall squarely under the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which obliges states to help address the consequences of native genocide and slavery,\u201d Gonsalves said.<\/p>\n In March this year, 123 nations voted for a landmark UN resolution that described chattel slavery as the gravest crime against humanity<\/a>. The UK was one of several European countries that abstained from voting in the resolution. But, last month, a UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination said countries were legally obliged to consider reparations<\/a> for the transatlantic slave trade and take other \u2060measures to address the enduring \u2060legacy of racial \u200bdiscrimination.<\/p>\n David Comissiong, the deputy chair of the Barbados<\/a> National Task Force on Reparations, said the Caribbean nations were considering \u201cseveral legal strategies\u201d.<\/p>\n