The University of the West Indies (The UWI) is patting itself on the back for the leadership role it has taken in the global reparatory justice movement, boasting of its influence in getting previous slave owners to begin making amends for this atrocity.
Vice-chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, told the institution’s University Council at its annual meeting on Friday, held virtually, that during academic year 2022/2023, some institutions and families in Europe that had participated in these crimes against humanity responded to “our call to come to the fore to make the relevant apologies to the people of the Caribbean and Africa and participate in a reparatory justice conversation”.
He noted, for example, that the Trevelyan family, which was one of the largest slave owning families in the Caribbean out of Britain, travelled to the Caribbean under the auspices of the The UWI to make apologies to the people of the Caribbean and to begin the process of creating repair.
The family, whose slave owning was concentrated in Grenada, visited that country and made a financial contribution with pledges for education scholarships for young Grenadians to participate in higher education.
“We took the opportunity to provide leadership that had been expected of us by Caricom. The heads of Government have established a Caricom Reparations Commission and they have asked the university to take leadership on this historic moment in our development of sovereignty that after nearly 200 years, of emancipation, we are now in a position with nationhood, with confidence, to say let us now return to this issue of social justice around crimes committed against our people, crimes against humanity in effect.
So we are now able to discuss all of this within the context of Caribbean sovereignty,” Prof Beckles said.
The vice-chancellor further noted that a critical part of the university’s reparation leadership on behalf of Caricom was to make a strategic decision that the Caribbean movement for justice requires that African states must come on board so that Caricom and Africa can speak with one voice.
“So at Cave Hill, we organised a symposium and we were blessed with the presence of African diplomats, as well as the vice-president of the Republic of Colombia who travelled to Barbados in order to make a statement that Colombia will provide global leadership along with Caricom in our hemisphere and to build bridges to the African movement.
“And this was the first time that we were able to bring African leaders, Latin American leaders into the Caribbean to create this global context,” he said.
In the meantime, Professor Beckles said that the university was also able to secure a donation of US$750,000 from research funding institution Open Society to fund its participation and leadership in this movement.
He also boasted of The UWI’s delivery of the first-ever masters programme in reparatory justice studies, in collaboration with the University of Glasgow which began in September 2023.
