The wording is opaque, downright confusing in fact, but it has nevertheless been acclaimed as a breakthrough in the very long fight for European countries to deliver “reparatory justice” for their historic involvement in the slave trade.
“The time has come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation towards forging a common future based on equity,” reads the communique from October’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit, a document signed by the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
It paves the way for what the Bahamas foreign affairs minister, Frederick Mitchell, insists will be “a comprehensive report” on the reparations owed to those people and countries — many of them former British colonies in the Caribbean — when London hosts a U.K.-Caribbean Forum next March.