About the Event

The Accra Reparations Conference, being co-organized by the Republic of Ghana and the African Union Commission, seeks to promote dialogue, knowledge sharing and actionable strategies among diverse and relevant stakeholders on the way forward regarding addressing historical injustices against Africans and peoples of African descent, through the slave trade, segregation (Jim Crow), colonialism, apartheid, neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism. In various parts of the world, people of African ancestry are pushing the cause for reparations. In the United States, political leaders, religious personalities, grassroots organizations, opinion leaders have been unceasingly and increasingly calling for reparation, generations after generations. The icon of the golden age of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King made several calls for reparation for Black Americans. In recent years, cities and municipalities in the US have been passing progressively bills in favour of reparations. The topic of reparations gained ground in the United States, having been one of the 2020 Presidential election campaign subjects. The HR 40 Congressional Bill, which aimed at studying the inequities of slavery and segregation and at proposing remedies to rectify the wrongs caused by these systems, is yet to be passed into law. In the Caribbean, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has been undoubtedly the champion for restorative justice of the Caribbean-descent African people. The Accra Reparations Conference, building on previous and present efforts in favour of reparation intends to build an all-African peoples unified front for the advancement of the cause of reparatory justice. That front endorsed by the African Union, with the strategic support of CARICOM and various stakeholders in the United States of America and in Europe will constitute the first ever African Committee of Experts on reparations. The Committee, drawn from relevant fields including law, will be established for the purpose of developing a Common African Position on Reparations and incorporate therein, an African Reparatory Programme of Action. Moreover, the Committee, among other things, will collaborate with CARICOM to establish an African Caribbean Joint Mechanism on Reparatory Justice based on the resolve of the Global African Diaspora Summit held in South Africa in 2012. To assist the Committee in the discharge of its mandate, a global reparations fund will also be created. The call for reparations is a call for justice to right the wrongs of the past and of the present and to transform the vicious cycle of impoverishment of Africa and its people into a virtuous cycle for a shared prosperity.