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Countries Such As Jamaica And Barbados Commemorate 200 Years Since The End Of Slavery With Calls For Action And Healing.

“Today, Emancipation Day, may we never forget the hardships our ancestors faced under slavery and in the fight for freedom,” Mia Amor Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, said in a post on Twitter.

The UWI, wholly owning its mission as an activist university, celebrates the activism that has placed it at the pinnacle of the global reparations movement, seeking justice and driving a new development paradigm for the region. Concretising the university’s role at the epicentre of this growing global movement, Vice-Chancellor Prof Sir Hilary Beckles, whose research features in the TIME’s article, says, “The UWI continues to be at the forefront of justice conversations, including the battle for reparations to be made to peoples of the Caribbean. These are owed by colonial powers, as compensation for their historical crimes of native genocide and African enslavement, through which these powers have amassed great wealth, and from which they still profit.”

Representatives from African and Caribbean nations attended a series of meetings in Bridgetown, Barbados, last week, to formulate a strategy to demand reparations.

The ground-breaking meetings included representation from the University of the West Indies (UWI), the Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the African Union (AU), Barbados’ government, grant-making network Open Society Foundations and the Caribbean Pan African Network, Reuters reported.

At last year’s CANTO Conference, Denis O’Brien, Digicel’s founder and chairman, announced a reparations initiative called The Repair Campaign. The campaign, guided by the 2014 CARICOM 10 Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, seeks to amplify Caribbean voices calling for reparations and get former colonial powers to commit to a long-term reparatory fund for Caribbean countries affected by slavery and colonisation.

From the 15th to the 19th century, at least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported by mostly European ships and sold into slavery. Almost half were taken by Portugal to Brazil. The idea of paying reparations or making other amends for slavery has a long history but the movement is gaining momentum worldwide.