{"id":16062,"date":"2025-04-21T11:58:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T11:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/?p=16062"},"modified":"2026-02-01T14:08:56","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T14:08:56","slug":"descendants-of-slave-owners-and-enslaved-people-in-the-caribbean-call-for-reparations-at-the-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/16062\/descendants-of-slave-owners-and-enslaved-people-in-the-caribbean-call-for-reparations-at-the-un\/","title":{"rendered":"Descendants of slave owners and enslaved people in the Caribbean call for reparations at the UN"},"content":{"rendered":"

The great-great-grandson of 19th-century\u00a0British Prime Minister William Gladstone<\/span>\u00a0said he was horrified to learn seven years ago that his ancestors were slave owners in Jamaica and Guyana.<\/p>\n

And former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan said she learned after records of Britain\u2019s\u00a0Slave Compensation Commission<\/span>\u00a0were put online in 2013 that one of her ancestors, Sir John Trevelyan, owned sugar cane plantations in Grenada and about 1,000 enslaved people.<\/p>\n

They spoke at a meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York this past week where, for the first time, descendants of slave owners and enslaved people in former British colonies in the Caribbean sat at the same table with diplomats and experts from those nations\u00a0discussing the contentious issue of reparations<\/span>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a historic event,\u201d said Trevelyan, who moderated the meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent\u2019s weeklong session.<\/p>\n

From about the year 1500, millions of West Africans were sent to work mainly on plantations in the Caribbean and\u00a0the Americas,<\/span>\u00a0including the southern United States. U.N. human rights chief Volker T\u00fcrk told the forum that an estimated 25 million to 30 million Africans were uprooted for the purpose of slavery.<\/p>\n

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Few nations have apologized for their role in slavery, and reparations have been the subject of much debate.<\/p>\n

The Geneva-based Human Rights Council has called for global action for years, including reparations, apologies and educational reforms to make amends for racism against people of African descent. The 15-nation Caribbean Community, known as CARICOM, has a 10-point plan for reparatory justice, starting with demands for European countries where enslaved people were kept and traded to issue formal apologies.<\/p>\n

T\u00fcrk noted a European Union statement in 2023 profoundly regretting the \u201cuntold suffering\u201d caused by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the African Union\u2019s designation of 2025 as the \u201cYear of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the meeting of descendants of enslaved people and slave owners on Tuesday, Trevelyan spoke of her family\u2019s decision to apologize to Grenada and to make a contribution of 100,000 British pounds (about $133,000) toward education in the Caribbean island nation.<\/p>\n

Going to Grenada with family and apologizing \u201cwasn\u2019t exactly smooth sailing,\u201d said Trevelyan, who left the BBC and has become a campaigner for reparations. There were protests by one group that thought the apology was inadequate and the money not enough.<\/p>\n

Also at the meeting was Aidee Walker, who said she was shocked when a DNA test revealed she was not only predominantly Scots-Irish but also part Nigerian, then discovered that her great-great-great-grandfather, who moved to New Zealand, was the son of a slave owner in Jamaica named John Malcolm and an African housekeeper.<\/p>\n

Walker and her sister, Kate Thomas, said when they found out they felt they had to do something.<\/p>\n

Thomas said she discovered what Trevelyan was doing and got in touch with Verene Shepherd, a professor emeritus and vice chair of the CARICOM reparations commission, who encouraged the sisters to start with the apology.<\/p>\n

Charles Gladstone, meanwhile, said he felt \u201ca profound sense of guilt\u201d after learning that former Prime Minister Gladstone\u2019s father owned estates with enslaved people \u2014 and that a great deal of his privileged life \u201cwas essentially connected to this criminal past.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he apologized to Guyana and Jamaica and will try to do something \u201cto make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n

While\u00a0Britain\u2019s role<\/span>\u00a0in abolishing slavery in 1833 is widely taught, Gladstone said, its involvement in the trade \u201chas been completely buried.\u201d The history must be told, he said, because \u201cthe evils of this crime against humanity are not historical, they\u2019re felt very, very profoundly today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s deputy U.N. ambassador, James Kariuki, attended the meeting but did not speak. The British Mission, asked for a comment, sent a statement from Development Minister Anneliese Dodds to Parliament on Feb. 25 saying she and Prime Minister Keir Starmer have been \u201cabsolutely clear that we will not be making cash transfers and payments to the Caribbean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gladstone said supporters of reparations must keep working together. If thousands of families like his stand up and say, \u201c\u2018We would like to do something about this,\u2019 then there is a chance that the government in Britain could do something more substantial,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thomas agreed. \u201cIf we can get the numbers, then that could influence institutions and governments to act,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a really great start to what I think will be a lifelong journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepherd, who taught at the University of the West Indies, said there have not been many apologies and, while some Europeans express remorse or regret for slavery, \u201cno one is talking about reparations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arley Gill, chairman of Grenada\u2019s National Reparations Commission, said, however, he sees positive movement toward reparative justice globally and believes \u201cwe are on a good path to ensure these crimes against humanity are being recognized by the colonial powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Antigua\u2019s U.N. ambassador, Walton Webson, who is chair of the Caribbean ambassadors\u2019 caucus, ended the meeting by saying, \u201cWe have reached the point where speaking of reparations is no longer taboo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, he said, it\u2019s time to put reparations \u201con the lips of every child, every person\u201d and start to take action.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great-great-grandson of 19th-century\u00a0British Prime Minister William Gladstone\u00a0said he was horrified to learn seven years ago that his ancestors were slave owners in Jamaica and Guyana. And former BBC journalist Laura Trevelyan said she learned after records of Britain\u2019s\u00a0Slave Compensation Commission\u00a0were put online in 2013 that one of her ancestors, Sir John Trevelyan, owned sugar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AP","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1116,1,2362],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-african-union","category-analysis-reports","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19545,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16062\/revisions\/19545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}