The position put forward in a paper titled ‘Report on Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean’, produced by the firm Brattle, an international economics consulting firm has estimated that the United Kingdom owes Jamaica US$9.5 trillion in reparations, Spain owes US$103 billion for slavery.
According to Brattle’s estimates, the harms during the period of enslavement were inflicted on 19 million people over four centuries, including Africans kidnapped and transported to the Americas and Caribbean and those born into slavery, for a total of 802 million years of life to be compensated.
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Culture Minister Olivia Grange was presented with the report on Wednesday by Jamaican judge Patrick Robinson of the International Court of Justice, who wrote the introduction to the paper.
In his meeting with Grange, Permanent Secretary, DeanRoy Bernard, and members of the National Council on Reparation, 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,”.
He added: “The report determines the reparations that are due in respect of over 30 states and overseas territories in which transatlantic chattel slavery was carried out.”
The report assesses reparations for harm done during the period when chattel slavery was carried out and for continuing harm thereafter.
Robinson said, “The high figures, in my view, constitute a plain, unvarnished statement of the grossness of the practise of transatlantic chattel slavery. Nonetheless, we decided to recommend to countries entitled to reparations that they consider in consultation with former slave holding countries, the payment of reparations over a 10-year period, a 15-year period, a 20-year period, or a 25-year period.”
Grange was thankful to Robinson for discussing the quantification of reparations and passed the information on to the National Council on Reparation to study the report to see how it can inform the Roadmap to Reparation.
The Report on Reparation for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean was authored by Principals Dr. Coleman Bazelon and Dr. Alberto Vargas, Senior Research Analyst Rohan Janakiraman, and Research Analyst Mary Olson.