Two Universities Sign Historic Agreement on Slavery Reparations in the Caribbean – The Good Men Project

The agreement marks the first time that a British institution has apologised for the profits it made from slavery and attaches both money and resources to help make amends.

October 20, 2019 by Global Voices Leave a Comment

By Janine Mendes-Franco

Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies,Professor Sir Hilary Beckles,and the University of Glasgows Chief Operating Officer, Dr. David Duncan, recently signed ahistoric agreementfor slavery reparations the first such contract since people enslaved by the British werefully emancipatedin 1838.

Never before has a UK-based institution thatprofited from slaveryapologised forits role and even more importantly put its money where its mouth is. Quite fittingly, the 20 million agreement ( $24,308,500 USD) was signed at The UWIs regional headquarters in Kingston, Jamaica, on July 31, 2019 the day on which full emancipationfinally took effect181 years prior (and the eve of the annualEmancipation holidaythat many regional territories celebrate).

That 20 million, symbolic ofthe sumthe British governmentpaidto slave owners as compensation for the abolition of slavery, will be used for research and other development-based initiatives between the two universities over the next 20 years, under the auspices of theGlasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research, which is to be jointly owned and run. The aim is for the centre to find solutions for some of the Caribbeans most pressing developmental challenges, includingeconomics,public health care, and even issues of culturalidentity. It will be established on both universities campuses by September 2019.

Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Sir Hilary McDonald Beckles (left), and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde (right), at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus in Kingston, Jamaica November 17, 2017. IMF Photo/Krzystof Rucinski, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Ever since2013, when he waselectedas Chair of theCARICOM Regional Reparations Commission, aimed at outlin[ing] the path to reconciliation, truth, and justice for the victims of slavery and their descendants, Sir Beckles has beenat the forefrontof the regions lobby for reparations.

In a 2019 interview with regional magazineCaribbean Beat, he said that being a Windrushchild sealed his destiny of being involved in aspects of the black journey. He also noted the transformational power of theUniversity of the West Indies currently ranked among the top five percent of the best universities worldwide in building a resilient, sustainable region:

The last fifty years, weve built the Caribbean out of the colonial rubble. The issues in front of us this time are very different. An important role of UWI is to help clarify this historic moment and develop conversations about the next half-century. [] My focus was always on economic development and the role that education can play in the economic transformation of our societies. []

Reparations is connected to economic development. [] Im the vice president of the UNESCO Global Slave Routes project, the chairman of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, along with other hats. Im responsible for developing a framework for the research of slavery on a global basis. I spend a lot of time in Africa, Latin America, and Asia looking at how black slavery was globalised. Everything is connected. Britain has a role to play in putting back some of the money it milked from the Caribbean for its own development. Having achieved its own transformation, weve been left with the results of that extraction. I believe we have a right! Britain should return to the scene of the crime, and participate in cleaning up the mess it left behind.

In the context of the UKsrepeated dismissalofthe subject of reparations, thisMemorandum of Understandingwith the University of Glasgow isbeing hailedasseminal. Sir Beckles applauded the University of Glasgows stance that a university cannot be excellent if it is not ethical,addingthat the agreement has put the institution on moral high ground.

This post was previously published on Globalvoices.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 3.0.

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Two Universities Sign Historic Agreement on Slavery Reparations in the Caribbean - The Good Men Project