Respected jurist Patrick Robinson has described as appropriate a US$9.5 trillion estimate which the United Kingdom is said to owe Jamaica as reparations for transatlantic chattel slavery.
International economics consulting firm, Brattle, in a paper titled, Report on Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean‘ estimated that Jamaica is owed another US$103 billion by Spain.
“We spent a long time considering the sums,” said Robinson who wrote the introduction to the paper.
“People will laugh at us when we tell them that the United Kingdom must pay US$24 trillion, and US$9.5 trillion in respect of Jamaica, but ultimately, ladies and gentlemen, we decided that the figures should not be changed because they accurately reflect the enormity of the grotesque and unlawful practice of transatlantic chattel slavery,” he added.
Robinson, a member of the International Court of Justice, said “The high figures, in my view, constitute a plain, unvarnished statement of the grossness of the practice of transatlantic chattel slavery.”
The report was presented to Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange during a meeting yesterday. Robinson said the Brattle report was historic “because for the first time there is available a scientific and well-argued quantification of the reparations that are due in respect of the universe… that is, in all the countries in which it was carried out in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and North America”.