tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/reparations-10730/articlesReparations – The Conversation2024-03-07T12:22:50Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2250182024-03-07T12:22:50Z2024-03-07T12:22:50ZLord’s Resistance Army: ICC awards reparations to victims of commander Dominic Ongwen – what happens next<p><em>The International Criminal Court (ICC) has recently ordered <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/ongwen-case-icc-trial-chamber-ix-orders-reparations-victims">reparations</a> for victims of Dominic Ongwen, an ex-child soldier turned commander in the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that terrorised northern Uganda for two decades.</em></p>
<p><em>The court’s order, the first in the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/situations/uganda">Ugandan situation</a>, awards collective community-based symbolic payment for each victim. International criminal law scholars <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=lb2BdAwAAAAJ&hl=en">Tonny Raymond Kirabira</a> and <a href="https://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/directory/uche-miracle-chinwenmeri">Miracle Chinwenmeri Uche</a> answer questions about the ruling</em>.</p>
<h2>Who are the victims in this case?</h2>
<p>The victims are part of the post-war affected communities in northern Uganda. <a href="https://theconversation.com/icc-upholds-jail-term-for-ugandan-rebel-commander-ongwen-why-it-matters-for-africa-196349">Ongwen</a> is one of the top Lord’s Resistance Army commanders charged by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed between 2002 and 2005. The charges include attacks against the civilian population, murder, enslavement as well as sexual and gender-based violence. </p>
<p>Other charges include conscripting children under the age of 15 into an armed group and using them to participate actively in hostilities. </p>
<p>Ongwen was convicted of the crimes in 2021, and is currently serving <a href="https://theconversation.com/icc-upholds-jail-term-for-ugandan-rebel-commander-ongwen-why-it-matters-for-africa-196349">a joint sentence</a> of 25 years of imprisonment in Norway after his unsuccessful appeal in The Hague. When a person is convicted of more than one crime, the International Criminal Court pronounces a sentence for each crime as well as a joint sentence specifying the total period of imprisonment.</p>
<p>Essentially, not all victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army conflict will receive reparations. This order applies only to those harmed in specific ways by Ongwen, directly or indirectly. Ongwen’s victims recognised by the court included those in the internally displaced people’s camps and victims of sexual and gender-based crimes. Others are children born of those crimes, and former child soldiers.</p>
<p>Ongwen’s liability for reparations was set at €52,429,000 (US$57 million) for approximately 49,772 potential victims. But as he was already declared as indigent, the reparations will be made through the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/tfv">Trust Fund for Victims</a>. This is a separate organisation from the court. It is mandated with implementation of the International Criminal Court’s reparations and assistance programmes.</p>
<h2>What does international law say about reparations in this context?</h2>
<p>Generally, the obligation to repair harm under such a context arises from individual criminal responsibility of the person found to be criminally responsible for crimes. They are also equally liable for the reparations. But the international law has a set of non-legally binding <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">basic principles and guidelines</a> on the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of gross violation of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law. States may be responsible for reparations in contexts like that of the Lord’s Resistance Army war in northern Uganda.</p>
<p>The legal dilemma is that Uganda’s criminal justice system, like those of many countries in the developing world, does not have a defined victims’ programme or mechanism for reparations. In that case, the alternative is to look at the existing <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice">transitional justice</a> frameworks or policies to draw pathways for reparations.</p>
<h2>Is there a precedent for the ICC’s reparation order?</h2>
<p>The primary guidance on reparations is derived from <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf">Article 75 of the Rome Statute</a>. The article allows the court to make orders for the benefit of victims, including compensation and rehabilitation. The reparations order can be made directly against a convicted person, in this case Ongwen, detailing the nature and scale of reparations he needs to make. The court can equally order the award through the trust fund. </p>
<p>This is not the first reparations order by the International Criminal Court. There were orders in the cases of Congolese rebel leaders <a href="https://www.trustfundforvictims.org/en/news/lubanga-case-tfv-announces-details-collective-reparation-award">Thomas Lubanga</a>, <a href="https://trustfundforvictims.org/en/what-we-do/reparation-orders/katanga">Germain Katanga</a> and <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/ntaganda-case-tfv-welcomes-reparations-order-victims-icc-trial-chamber-vi">Bosco Ntaganda</a>. The court also issued a reparations order in the case of Malian Islamist <a href="https://www.trustfundforvictims.org/en/what-we-do/reparation-orders/al-madhi">Ahmad Al Mahdi</a>. These cases included collective reparations with individualised components. The Al Mahdi reparations process included the entire population of Timbuktu as eligible victims.</p>
<p>In the Ongwen case, the court used the principles of reparations set out in the Ntaganda case. But the court expanded the scope of victims as well as the types and modalities of reparations. More notable are the principles in relation to the treatment of child victims; gender inclusivity and sensitivity; and sexual and gender-based violence.</p>
<h2>What happens next?</h2>
<p>There are two phases to the court’s practice: the judicial and administrative stages of reparations. The court issues an order under the judicial proceedings. But it works through other administrative channels in the registry, the legal representatives of victims and the Trust Fund for Victims in relation to the execution, implementation and enforcement of the reparations orders. As Ongwen’s case involves individual and collective reparations, the court will monitor and oversee the implementation of the order.</p>
<p>Following this reparations order, we should expect to see another core judicial decision of approving a draft implementation plan submitted by the trust fund. And subsequently there will be a consideration of the trust fund’s periodic reports.</p>
<p>While only 4,096 victims were authorised to participate in the court proceedings, the judges <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/ongwen-case-icc-trial-chamber-ix-orders-reparations-victims">envisage</a> that there will be about 49,772 potential beneficiaries of the reparations. </p>
<p>The court will also be expected to review decisions by the trust fund during the administrative screening, as part of its oversight role during the implementation stage. The trust fund will carry out consultations with victims for the purposes of designing and implementing the reparations awards. This and the process and outcome of fundraising mean that the full implementation of the reparations will take years.</p>
<p>Uganda as the concerned state party is obligated under international law to support the enforcement of the reparation orders. So Uganda’s government would be expected to go out and find people who fall under the court’s order.</p>
<p>But the government is hesitant to single out individuals as direct victims. The Lord’s Resistance Army war affected the entire northern Uganda and part of the country’s eastern region. The available pathway for the government’s formal engagement with Ongwen’s victims will be through the <a href="https://www.ictj.org/news/beyond-symbolism-translating-uganda%E2%80%99s-transitional-justice-policy-real-changes-lives-victims">National Transitional Justice Policy of 2019</a>, which has provision for victims’ reparations and other support.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225018/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Uganda, as the concerned state party, is expected to go out and find Dominic Ongwen’s victims.Tonny Raymond Kirabira, Lecturer in Law, University of East LondonMiracle Chinwenmeri Uche, Lecturer in Law, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2186082023-12-08T13:03:35Z2023-12-08T13:03:35ZKenya at 60: the shameful truth about British colonial abuse and how it was covered up<p>It is fairly well known that the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were affected by terrible acts of violence under the British colonial administration. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/britain-maumau-empire-waiting">British government</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/king-charles-stops-short-of-apology-for-british-colonial-violence-kenya">King Charles</a> have acknowledged it, and some victims of violence have taken the British government <a href="https://www.leighday.co.uk/news/blog/2017-blogs/the-mau-mau-case-five-years-on/">to court</a> for these crimes. </p>
<p>Less-known is how much the British imperialist government tried to cover up these violations. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43670796">research</a> reveals how harsh British detention camps in Kenya were, and the extremes to which the colonialists went to conceal information about this.</p>
<p>Much of this violence happened during the state of emergency, which lasted between 20 October 1952 and 12 January 1960. </p>
<p>As militant nationalism, including the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/mau-mau-uprising">Mau Mau rebellion</a>, grew against the colonial state, a state of emergency was declared in 1952. It introduced a raft of extraordinary regulations, akin to wartime powers. </p>
<p>The regulations paved the way for mass arrests, detention without trial, excess capital punishment, summary executions, evictions, fines and the forced resettlement of entire villages. </p>
<p>From 1953 to 1960, between <a href="https://repository.essex.ac.uk/20529/15/LHR%20AM%20Duffy.pdf#page=16">70,000</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17531055.2011.611677">150,000</a> Mau Mau suspects were detained without trial in an archipelago of camps. Conditions in the camps were dire and British colonials and loyalist warders meted out violence with impunity. </p>
<p>The Kenya Human Rights Commission <a href="https://www.khrc.or.ke/index.php/2015-03-04-10-37-01/press-releases/826-accept-without-equivocation-responsibility-over-the-atrocious-colonial-rule-british-investments-and-programmes-in-kenya-to-date">estimates</a> that more than 100,000 Kenyans were killed, tortured and maimed during this time. </p>
<p>Using declassified colonial files and government papers, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43670796">my research</a> reveals the pressure that was exerted by the Colonial Office in London to conceal evidence of violence against detainees. It shows how a highly sophisticated propaganda machine controlled the public narrative of violent incidents. </p>
<p>It was a form of state-sanctioned amnesia that hid the victims’ perspectives. It officially depicted the British colonials as rational actors doing a difficult job under the circumstances. </p>
<p>Highlighting this colonial story enriches the present and sheds new light on these events.</p>
<h2>Violence in detention</h2>
<p>I identified flash-points of violence which revealed the brutality of the colonial detention regime. </p>
<p>One of these, known as screening, occurred when an entire village or community was confined and interrogated about their political allegiances. Many were subsequently detained. </p>
<p>To progress through the camp complex to eventual release, detainees (none of whom had been charged with or convicted of any crime) had to confess to their Mau Mau activities. </p>
<p>Camp staff achieved this by using systematic brutality that had been sanctioned by the colonial administration. </p>
<p>One example was the “dilution” technique. This occurred when a small number of non-cooperating detainees were housed with cooperating detainees who – through a concerted psychological and physical attack – would push them to accept the rehabilitation regime and confess to taking the Mau Mau oath. </p>
<p>A variation of this, the Mwea procedure, used physical force to break “hardcore” detainees when they first arrived at the detention camp. Incoming detainees would be abused by prison staff and cooperating detainees until they submitted. </p>
<p>Another form of sanctioned violence was the use of “overpowering force”. This was supposed to be executed by European rehabilitation and prison staff in the form of on-the-spot punishment of no more than 12 strokes using a regulation cane. </p>
<p>From 1953, a policy to compel detainees to engage in work was introduced and disobedience was redefined as a major offence. So when detainees refused to work, they were subject to corporal punishment. </p>
<p>The scene was therefore set for the sanctioned use of violence against detainees. And if people were injured or killed in defiance of a legal order, those consequences could more easily be justified by camp authorities.</p>
<p>These methods of corporal punishment resulted in many injuries and deaths because camp staff regularly exceeded the punishment specified in emergency ordinances.</p>
<p>For instance, on 3 March 1959 at Hola detention camp in the north province, 11 detainees were killed and many more injured after being set upon by guards for “refusing to work”. </p>
<p>The initial official account blamed the deaths on contaminated water. However, the local inquest magistrate revealed the deaths “were due to shock and haemorrhage due to multiple bruising caused by violence”. Still, no one was ever prosecuted for these killings.</p>
<h2>Memory and history</h2>
<p>The history that is remembered is no accident. Writing to the governor and the colonial secretary in 1953, Kenya’s attorney general advised, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/mau-mau-sinning-quietly">if we are going to sin, we must sin quietly</a>”. Thus, a version of British imperialism was projected that relied upon concealment of harsh facts.</p>
<p>The violent architecture of the camps was hidden behind complicated bureaucratic language that stripped away its real meaning. </p>
<p>The British public were spun a narrative by the colonial government about the “rehabilitative” nature of the camps – a way to convert people away from Mau Mau allegiance.</p>
<p>In addition to spin, there was a deliberate attempt to suppress information. I was able to pinpoint significant Colonial Office directives from the late 1950s, which I argue were central to official denial and amnesia. </p>
<p>As British colonial territories were inching toward independence in the mid-20th century, the government in Whitehall <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/abs/legacies-of-british-colonial-violence-viewing-kenyan-detention-camps-through-the-hanslope-disclosure/8B1F91BFF8D1F967A9220DA5F9D47551">redoubled its efforts to bury</a> any evidence that implicated its colonial officials in violations that occurred in territories under British administration. </p>
<p>All top secret classified materials were rapidly centralised in executive offices in Kenya and marked for “European eyes only”. </p>
<p>Certain colonial files were given a particular classification in a “Watch” series prior to Kenyan independence in 1963. This included “all papers which might be interpreted as showing racial discrimination against Africans on the part of the Government”. </p>
<p>The files <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-history-review/article/abs/legacies-of-british-colonial-violence-viewing-kenyan-detention-camps-through-the-hanslope-disclosure/8B1F91BFF8D1F967A9220DA5F9D47551">were then</a> either destroyed or removed to the UK in the 1960s. We know about the classification directives and destruction mandates <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/18/sins-colonialists-concealed-secret-archive">because</a> a paper trail covering those particular processes survived. </p>
<p>It is clear from these directives that evidence of serious human rights abuses would be destroyed in these document purges. Documents deemed to be safe were transferred to the new independent government.</p>
<p>All of these acts meant that the colonial portrayal of the Mau Mau uprising as irrational could be legitimised.</p>
<p>Selectivity over what could be mentioned was a successful colonial strategy, with resonance in how British colonial history is viewed today.</p>
<h2>Apology and reparations</h2>
<p>Those who continue to benefit from Britain’s historical violence are insensitive or unresponsive to the calls for acknowledgement, apology and reparations. </p>
<p>Public statements by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/king-charles-stops-short-of-apology-for-british-colonial-violence-kenya">King Charles</a> and former British foreign secretary <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2013-06-06/debates/13060646000005/MauMauClaims(Settlement)">William Hague</a> recognise that Kenyans were subjected to torture and ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration, but they fall short of a full apology.</p>
<p>There will be difficulty in examining and addressing historical harms. But my research reveals a need to reconcile the colonial narratives with historical facts. This holds the potential to foster genuine compassion and justice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218608/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aoife Duffy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Thousands of Kenyans were held in detention camps, and the British imperialist government tried to cover up brutal violations that occurred there.Aoife Duffy, Senior Lecturer, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146262023-12-01T13:38:17Z2023-12-01T13:38:17ZColonized countries rarely ask for redress over past wrongs − the reasons can be complex<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562470/original/file-20231129-20-sljkib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C17%2C3901%2C2404&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indian visitors look at a painting depicting the Amritsar Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/indian-visitors-look-at-a-painting-depicting-the-amritsar-news-photo/120271580?adppopup=true">Narinder Nanu/AFP via Getty Images)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The king of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/01/1185647423/dutch-king-apologizes-for-the-monarchys-role-in-global-slave-trade">apologized in July 2023</a> for his ancestors’ role in the colonial slave trade. </p>
<p>He is not alone in expressing remorse for past wrongs. In 2021, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/style/article/benin-art-returned-scli-intl/index.html#:%7E:text=Twenty%2Dsix%20works%20of%20art,countries%20to%20recover%20looted%20artifacts.">France returned 26 works of art seized by French colonial soldiers</a> in Africa – the largest restitution France has ever made to a former colony. In the same year, Germany officially apologized for its 1904-08 genocide of the Herero and Nama people of Namibia <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-officially-calls-colonial-era-killings-namibia-genocide-2021-05-28/">and agreed to fund reconstruction and development projects in Namibia.</a>.</p>
<p>This is, some political scientists have observed, the “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=pPXpiXQ45osC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">age of apology</a>” for past wrongs. Reams of articles, particularly in Western media, are devoted to former colonizer countries and whether they have enacted redress – <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/learning/should-museums-return-looted-artifacts-to-their-countries-of-origin.html">returned museum artifacts</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html">paid reparations</a> or <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/12/20/some-european-countries-have-apologised-for-their-colonial-past-is-it-enough">apologized for past wrongs</a>. </p>
<p>Yet this is rarely the result of official requests. In fact, very few former colonies have officially – that is, government to government – pressed perpetrators to redress past injustices. </p>
<p>My analysis found that governments <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad118">in 78% of such cases</a> have not asked to be compensated for historical acts of injustice against them. As a <a href="https://www.bu.edu/pardeeschool/profile/manjari-chatterjee-miller/">scholar of international relations</a> who has studied the effect of <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=22642">colonialism on the present-day foreign policy of countries affected</a>, I found this puzzling. Why don’t more victim states press for intercountry redress? </p>
<p>The answer lies in the fact that colonial pasts and atoning for injustices are controversial – not just in what were perpetrator countries, but also in their victims. What to ask redress for, from whom and for whom are complicated questions with no easy answers. And there are often divergent narratives within victim countries about how to view past colonial history, further hampering redress. </p>
<h2>Focus on perpetrator country</h2>
<p>There is a disproportionate amount of attention paid to whether perpetrator countries – that is, former colonizers who established extractive and exploitative governments in colony states – offer redress. They are <a href="https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/summer/germany-japan-reconciliation/">lauded when they enact redress</a> and <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/japans-apologies-on-comfort-women-not-enough/">shamed when they do not</a>.</p>
<p>The processes pertaining to redress within victim countries – the former colonies – gets less attention. This, I believe, has the effect of making these countries peripheral to a conversation in which they should be central.</p>
<p>This matters – success or failure of redress can <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ia/article-abstract/99/4/1693/7198184">depend on whether victim countries officially push for it</a>.</p>
<p>Take the experiences of two formerly colonized countries that I studied in depth in relation to the question of redress: India and Namibia. </p>
<h2>The Indian experience: Different narratives</h2>
<p>It’s <a href="https://globalchallenges.ch/issue/10/decolonisation-and-international-law/">difficult for a country</a>, particularly a poor developing nation, to take a former colonizer, usually a much richer country, to the International Court of Justice to ask for redress for the entire experience of colonialism. </p>
<p>But most former colonies have never officially asked for some form of redress – be it apology, reparations or restitution, even for specific acts of injustice. </p>
<p>India is an example of the difficulty in building consensus for official redress. Take the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/opinion/1919-amrtisar-british-empire-india.html">Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919</a>, in which British troops killed hundreds of peaceful protesters, including women and children.</p>
<p>The Indian government has never officially <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/india-should-not-ask-britain-to-apologise-for-the-amritsar-massacre/">asked for an apology</a> from the United Kingdom over the incident. </p>
<p>Part of the problem is different groups within India have different narratives about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/29/british-empire-india-amartya-sen">the 200 years of British colonial rule</a>. No one disputes that the Raj was exploitative and violent. But which acts of violence to emphasize? How much responsibility should be assigned to the British? And should any positive attributes of the Raj be highlighted? These are all debated.</p>
<p>Such points of divergence are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiad118">reflected in India’s federal and state-issued history textbooks</a>, according to my analysis.</p>
<p>The bloody <a href="https://theconversation.com/global/topics/india-pakistan-75-125381">Partition of India in 1947</a> and the subsequent creation of Pakistan, for example, are blamed on the British in federal and many state textbooks. But it merits just a small paragraph in Gujarati textbooks, where it is blamed entirely on the Muslim League, the founding party of Pakistan. In the state of Tamil Nadu, Partition is mentioned without any description of either the horrors that followed or where responsibility lay.</p>
<p>Different narratives also appear in the Indian Parliament. When the issue of redress came up in 1997 – the 50th year of Indian independence and just before <a href="https://www.indiatoday.in/interactive/immersive/queen_elizabeth_70_years_on_throne/">Queen Elizabeth II visited India</a> – politicians agreed that India’s emergence from what politician Somnath Chatterjee described as “<a href="https://eparlib.nic.in/handle/123456789/430">a strangulating and dehumanizing slavery under a colonial imperialist power</a>” was worth celebrating. But on the issue of whether Elizabeth should apologize for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, there was little agreement. Calls from some politicians for an apology were drowned out by others who jabbed at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, pointing out its allies had <a href="https://eparlib.nic.in/handle/123456789/479">never apologized for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi</a>.</p>
<p>As of this writing, the U.K. has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/10/theresa-may-expresses-regret-for-1919-amritsar-massacre">expressed regret for the massacre</a> but never apologized, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/world/asia/jallianwala-bagh-massacre-india-britain.html">infuriating many Indians</a>.</p>
<h2>The long journey for Namibian redress</h2>
<p>Namibia is an uncommon case of redress where the government has officially pushed for an apology and reparations from its former colonizer, Germany. But even then it was a painful, complex and <a href="https://theconversation.com/genocide-negotiations-between-germany-and-namibia-hit-stumbling-blocks-89697">time-consuming process</a> dogged by many of the themes that have prevented India and others from seeking formal redress.</p>
<p>Between 1884 and 1919, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/namibia-a-timeline-of-germanys-brutal-colonial-history/a-57729985">Namibia was a German colony</a>, with some communities systematically dispossessed of their traditional lands. In 1904, one of these communities, <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/herero-revolt-1904-1907">the Herero</a>, rebelled, followed in 1905 by the Nama. In response, German troops slaughtered thousands in a bloodbath that is today <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/features/longform/2022/11/6/reckoning-with-genocide-in-namibia">widely acknowledged to be a genocide</a>. Survivors, including women and children, were herded into horrific concentration camps and subjected to forced labor and medical experiments. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of men stand with chains around their necks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562474/original/file-20231129-17-m04tz6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Captured Herero fighters in 1904.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gefangene-hereros-1904-05identisch-mit-nr-in-lz-8-news-photo/545965213?adppopup=true">Ullstein Bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The struggle to hold Germany accountable began decades ago, with individuals from the Herero and Nama communities calling for accountability and reparations. Germany rebuffed them repeatedly, precisely because the Namibian government did not take up their call. Only in 2015, after the Namibian government officially requested redress, did Germany acquiesce.</p>
<p>In May 2021, Germany <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/germany-officially-calls-colonial-era-killings-namibia-genocide-2021-05-28/">finally agreed to recognize the genocide</a>, apologize and establish a fund of US$1.35 billion toward reconstruction and development projects in Herero- and Nama-dominated areas. </p>
<p>Why did it take so long? For the Herero and Nama, the genocide and loss of traditional lands were always forefront. But for others in Namibia – notably, the dominant political party, the South West Africa People’s Organization, or SWAPO, which consists largely of members of the Ovambo ethnic community – uniting Namibians to come together in a national, anti-colonial struggle for independence was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/hgs/article-abstract/26/3/394/575370?redirectedFrom=fulltext">deemed more important</a> than focusing on the wrongs suffered by any one community.</p>
<p>After independence, the ruling SWAPO <a href="https://frw.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/762/1/05029.pdf">prioritized nation-building and unity</a> and cultivated ties with the German government, hoping for foreign aid and economic development. Complicating matters, the Ovambo had not lost their own traditional lands to colonialism in the same way as the Herero and Nama.</p>
<p>For years, government-approved school history textbooks used in Namibian schools reflected the SWAPO narrative. One Ovambo former school history teacher told me that Namibian children learned about the “war of national resistance” and how exploitative colonialism had necessitated that war. But the word “genocide” was never used, and there were no mentions of the suffering of affected communities.</p>
<p>Around 2010, Namibian activists, NGO workers and government officials from all communities began to search for common ground to reconcile the different narratives. Some attempts failed. A 2014 museum exhibition on the genocide collapsed after its financier, the Finnish embassy, withdrew funding – allegedly under pressure, one Namibian expert told me, from the German government. But others succeeded. The <a href="https://nan.gov.na/home">National Archives of Namibia</a> launched a project to collect academic papers on divergent narratives of the liberation struggle and colonial history. </p>
<p>As reconciling narratives progressed, history textbooks were revised to honor not just SWAPO’s version of history, but also highlight the brutalities suffered by the Herero and Nama. They included frank discussions of genocide and colonial atrocities. Against this backdrop, the Namibian government officially initiated a request for redress from Germany. Both governments appointed teams to find a resolution, resulting in the 2021 reparation fund.</p>
<p>Redress between countries is rare. Successful redress even more so. But the example of Namibia shows that it can be done when the governments of victim countries initiate redress. By focusing only on perpetrator states, we miss an opportunity to examine their victims as agents of change, and thereby perpetuate redress as an unusual phenomenon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Manjari Chatterjee Miller is affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations.</span></em></p>Fewer than a quarter of once-colonized countries make official government-to-government requests for an apology or reparations.Manjari Chatterjee Miller, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations/Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2178282023-11-28T13:24:34Z2023-11-28T13:24:34ZSharpeville: new research on 1960 South African massacre shows the number of dead and injured was massively undercounted<p>On 21 March 1960 at 1.40 in the afternoon, apartheid South Africa’s police opened fire on a peaceful crowd of about 4,000 residents of Sharpeville, who were protesting against carrying <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa-1800-1994">identity documents</a> that restricted black people’s movement. The police minimised the number of victims by at least one third, and justified the shooting by claiming that the crowd was violent. This shocking story has been thus misrepresented for over 60 years.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">new research</a> retells the story of Sharpeville, about 70km south of Johannesburg, from the viewpoint of the victims themselves. As experienced <a href="https://www.lsu.edu/hss/history/people/faculty/clark.php">historians</a> who have undertaken archival research in South Africa <a href="https://history.ucla.edu/faculty/william-worger">since the 1970s</a> we based our <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">research</a> on interviews with survivors and investigation into government records in both the <a href="https://archive.nelsonmandela.org/index.php/south-african-police-museum-and-archives">police archives</a> and the <a href="https://www.gov.za/about-government/contact-directory/soe/soe/national-archives-south-africa-nasa">national archives</a> in Pretoria. Our work reveals the true number of victims and the exact role of the police in the massacre.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/sharpeville-massacre-21-march-1960">Sharpeville Massacre</a> ignited international outrage and the birth of the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/british-anti-apartheid-movement">Anti-Apartheid Movement</a> worldwide. It also led to renewed political protests inside South Africa. These were met with the total suppression of political movements that lasted for 30 years. Despite its historic importance, Sharpeville as a place and a community has remained unknown to the wider public and its residents anonymous. Yet they have a story to tell.</p>
<p>Even though the <a href="https://www.justice.gov.za/trc/">Truth and Reconciliation Commission</a> chose the 1960 Sharpeville massacre as the formal beginning of its investigation of apartheid crimes, its examination of the massacre itself was perfunctory. Only three witnesses from the community were invited to testify during just part of one day (out of 2,000 witnesses during five years of hearings). </p>
<p>People in Sharpeville believe that the lack of attention to their plight since democracy in 1994 is because the original protest was organised by the rival <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pan-africanist-congress-pac">Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania</a>, not the governing African National Congress (ANC).</p>
<h2>Changing the narrative</h2>
<p>Based on our research, the new book <a href="https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257806">Voices of Sharpeville</a> traces the long residence of Africans in the greater Sharpeville area, as far as the <a href="https://www.maropeng.co.za/content/page/introduction-to-your-visit-to-the-cradle-of-humankind-world-heritage-site">Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site</a> 100km north. It also emphasises the crucial industrial importance of the greater <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/vaal-triangle-erupts-violence">Vaal Triangle</a> in which Sharpeville is located, from the 1930s onward.</p>
<p>Our work details the rich culture developed by urban Sharpeville residents in defiance of the attempts of <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/hendrik-frensch-verwoerd">Prime Minister HF Verwoerd’s</a> attempts to control African life. </p>
<p>Using the words of witnesses as recorded from their hospital beds within days of the shooting, and for weeks and months later, the events of 21 March 1960 are recounted in detail, increasing the number of victims to at least 91 dead, and 281 injured. The official police figures first published in 1960 and repeated endlessly ever since were 69 and 180 respectively. </p>
<p>The witness testimony places the responsibility for the shooting squarely with the police. </p>
<h2>New evidence</h2>
<p>The oral and documentary source material we used was previously off limits to researchers, insufficiently examined, or largely ignored. Access to many records held by the previous apartheid government was absolutely restricted prior to 1994, and since then many of the records have not been properly registered. This makes it challenging for researchers to find important documents.</p>
<p>But with the help of archivists and librarians, we were able to locate rare and even hidden records of Sharpeville and its history, and record the voices of many of the town’s residents.</p>
<h2>History of Sharpeville</h2>
<p>The first settlement in the Sharpeville area – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/sharpeville-gauteng">Top Location</a> – was razed in the 1950s to make space for white people’s businesses and homes. Official records and aerial photographs reveal the previous existence of a large community on the now empty land. There is also an unmarked cemetery where about 3,500 residents were buried between around 1900 and 1938. </p>
<p>By the mid-20th century, apartheid officials began to plan a bigger settlement in the vicinity. Sharpeville and other places like it were designed in the 1950s to segregate Africans away from the cities, which were reserved for white people only. </p>
<p>Sharpeville’s housing construction became a “model” for the ubiquitous <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/House-types-NE-51-6-and-51-9_fig4_272164901">four-roomed NE 51/9 houses</a> in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43622104">black townships</a> throughout the country, none of which they could own outright but rent only.</p>
<p>In almost 300 witness statements taken by the police immediately following the shooting, many of the everyday details of life in Sharpeville were revealed. These statements were recorded immediately after arrest and under oath by the police to determine guilt or innocence against the charges of “public violence and incitement” brought against them. They were also provided voluntarily in 1961 and 1962, also under oath, by survivors and family members to establish a basis for the compensation the victims unsuccessfully requested.</p>
<p>Details of family life – numbers of children, occupations, wages, and health – were recorded, providing a wealth of information about Sharpeville’s residents. </p>
<p><strong>The massacre</strong>: Testimony, both from the official 1960 <a href="https://idep.library.ucla.edu/sharpeville-massacre#:%7E:text=A%20Commission%20of%20Enquiry%20was,officials%2C%20and%20residents%20of%20Sharpeville">commission of enquiry</a> into the massacre, and the criminal court trial of over 70 Sharpeville residents in 1960-1961, detailed the actions of both the crowd and the police.</p>
<p>The testimony by civilians and police alike, together with the claimants’ statements, provides a minute-by-minute narrative of the day. The testimonies of the residents, including all the Africans who worked for the municipality and as police officers in Sharpeville, unanimously attested to the fact that the crowd gathered peacefully to <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pass-laws-south-africa">protest the pass law</a>. According to these witnesses, by the time of the shooting, almost 300 policemen had been moved into the township, including at least 13 white policemen armed with Sten machine guns. There were five Saracen armoured vehicles. </p>
<p>Police testimony makes it clear that the officer in charge gave the order to shoot, with the machine gunners firing directly into the crowd from a distance of no more than 3-5 metres. As one white official noted: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It made me think of a wheat field, where a whirlwind had shaken it.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The crowd was taken utterly by surprise by the police fusillade. Over three quarters of them, dead and injured alike, were shot in the back as they fled.</p>
<p><strong>The victims</strong>: Crucial to gaining an accurate understanding of the numbers of victims – their names, families, and injuries – were the autopsy and medical records detailing the exact causes of death and injury for the over 300 victims. These forms and narrative statements, filled out by the hospital physicians who treated the injured and performed autopsies on the dead, prove conclusively that the government under-counted the victims by at least one third. </p>
<p>This new information remained embargoed in police records throughout the apartheid years to 1994. Some of it was finally transferred to the national archives in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It details the injuries.</p>
<h2>Remembrance</h2>
<p>The people of Sharpeville wonder why the world has not listened to their stories even as they have told them from the day of the shooting to the present.</p>
<p>In 2023, residents were able to use the information uncovered in our research to update the Wall of <a href="https://www.freedompark.co.za/">Names Memorial</a> (which lists the name of every person who gave their life fighting for freedom in South Africa) at <a href="https://idep.library.ucla.edu/africa/about-freedom-park">Freedom Park</a> in Pretoria to reflect accurately the number of victims killed on 21 March 1960. But still they have received no compensation for their injuries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217828/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William H Worger receives funding from the University of California Office of the President.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy L Clark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite its historic importance, Sharpeville itself has remained unknown and its residents anonymous, yet they have a story to tell.Nancy L Clark, Dean and Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University William H. Worger, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Los AngelesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2169662023-11-07T14:25:20Z2023-11-07T14:25:20ZBritish king acknowledges colonial atrocities in Kenya – here’s what could happen next<p>On his <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/king-charles-and-queen-camilla-start-four-day-kenya-trip-4418742">official visit to Kenya</a>, King Charles III <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67273676">acknowledged</a> Britain’s colonial era “wrongdoings”. He also paid tribute to Kenyan soldiers who had participated in the first and second world wars on behalf of Britain. His visit coincided with Kenya’s 60th independence anniversary. </p>
<p>British colonial rule in Kenya was characterised by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/aug/18/uncovering-truth-british-empire-caroline-elkins-mau-mau">injustices</a>. Among <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n05/bernard-porter/how-did-they-get-away-with-it">these</a> were forceful dispossession of indigenous people’s land, torture, detention and brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements. </p>
<p>An <a href="https://www.royal.uk/news-and-activity/2023-10-31/a-speech-by-his-majesty-the-king-at-the-state-banquet-kenya">excerpt</a> from King Charles’s speech is useful to decipher the value and implications of his apology, from an international law perspective:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The wrongdoings of the past are a cause of the greatest sorrow and the deepest regret. There were abhorrent and unjustifiable acts of violence committed against Kenyans as they waged, as you said at the United Nations, a painful struggle for independence and sovereignty – and for that, there can be no excuse. In coming back to Kenya, it matters greatly to me that I should deepen my own understanding of these wrongs, and that I meet some of those whose lives and communities were so grievously affected.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The legacy of colonial rule is similarly apparent in other east African contexts. German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier recently <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-president-apologizes-for-colonial-crimes-in-tanzania/video-67279610">extended a similar gesture</a> in Tanzania over the brutal suppression of anti-colonial movements. In 2020, Belgium’s King Philippe <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/8/belgian-king-returns-mask-in-visit-to-dr-congo-alongside-pm">expressed regrets</a> about the colonial legacy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. </p>
<p>Are public acknowledgements like this just symbolic? Or do they have the potential to elicit reparations under international law? </p>
<p>As an <a href="https://www.port.ac.uk/about-us/structure-and-governance/our-people/our-staff/tonny-kirabira">academic</a> and practitioner of international law and transitional justice, I have worked (as a visiting professional) in the Office of Public Counsel for Victims at the International Criminal Court. </p>
<p>It is my view that these public acknowledgements of colonial legacy in east Africa by Britain, German and Belgium can be classified under the broad framework of transitional justice, as opposed to mere international relations or politics. </p>
<p>Transitional justice generally <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/transitional-justice">implies</a> both the judicial and non-judicial measures aimed at redressing legacies of human rights abuses. It is different from the traditional view on justice as it provides avenues to redress mass atrocity, in this case, colonial legacies. Measures under transitional justice range from the formation of truth commissions to criminal prosecution and reparation programmes. The process of <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2020/10/expert-memory-key-pillar-healing-democracy-and-peace">memorialisation</a> through museums and monuments is another important tool in the transitional justice process. </p>
<h2>The options</h2>
<p>International human rights law provides the <a href="https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/86303-how-is-transitional-justice-carried-out.html">standards</a> on transitional justice. It has four pillars: prosecutions, truth telling (truth commissions), reparations and institutional reform.</p>
<p><strong>Truth commissions</strong>: These are temporary quasi-judicial inquiries. They are normally commissioned by states to investigate previous wrongdoings and make recommendations. </p>
<p>Belgium, for instance, set up a <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/news/belgium-colonial-past-commission-addresses-issues-raised-belgian-congolese-and-belgian-rwandan_en">Special Parliamentary Commission</a> to deal with the country’s colonial legacy. It was the first of its kind in Europe and ended in December 2022. No <a href="https://asf.be/press-release-special-parliamentary-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past-a-closure-in-december-2022-will-not-allow-it-to-complete-its-mandate/">concrete proposals</a> came out of it. The government did not show serious interest in the work of the commission. </p>
<p><strong>Criminal prosecutions</strong>: This is not a real option because colonial crimes are state crimes. The International Criminal Court deals with cases of individuals, not states. And it only considers crimes committed after the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RS-Eng.pdf">Rome Statute</a> came into force, in 2002. </p>
<p><strong>Reparative justice</strong>: Apologies and memorials are forms of reparation. But these are incomplete without material aspects like restitution or monetary compensation to a group of victims. International law does not offer specific guidance on reparations for colonial state crimes. </p>
<p>Britain could be guided on reparations by <a href="https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/rsiwa/rsiwa.html">UN’s Articles</a> on responsibility of states (for internationally wrongful acts) adopted by the International Law Commission in 2001. The UN also has a set of <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">basic principles</a> on remedies for victims of human rights violations. </p>
<p>Reparations for state colonial crimes should take full account of individual and collective harm. But this has never been done before. </p>
<p>The governments in the former colonies are politically oriented to maintain friendly bilateral relations with the western powers. Thus the voices of the families of victims of colonial atrocities remain peripheral. </p>
<p>International law and the framework of transitional justice push the envelope beyond symbolism, and offer potential for actual reparations, but also <a href="https://blog.associatie.kuleuven.be/ltjb/">foster reconciliation</a>.</p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>There is a historical background to this admission of guilt and commitment to Kenya. In the past decade, Kenyan groups have filed a series of colonial-era compensation claims in the UK, relating to Britain’s brutal suppression of the <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/opinion/painful-mau-mau-stories-3223956">Mau Mau insurgency</a>. In 2013, when Kenya was marking its 50th independence anniversary, the UK Foreign Office <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-to-parliament-on-settlement-of-mau-mau-claims">announced</a> it would be settling claims of Kenyans relating to the Mau Mau events. The British government also promised to fund the construction of a memorial in Nairobi. This was largely a negotiated settlement out of court, and not an outcome of a judicial inquiry.</p>
<p>King Charles III’s recent apology is not an isolated event, but rather a reflection of the progress Kenya has made in seeking redress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216966/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tonny Raymond Kirabira does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>King Charles III’s recent statements are a reflection of the progress Kenya has made in seeking redress for colonial-era legacies.Tonny Raymond Kirabira, Teaching Fellow, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2144792023-10-03T04:51:47Z2023-10-03T04:51:47ZThe disability royal commission heard horrific stories of harm – now we must move towards repair<p><em>The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has shared its final report. In this <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/disability-rc-2023-146083">series</a>, we unpack what the commission’s 222 recommendations could mean for a more inclusive Australia.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The final report of the <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/">Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability</a> follows <a href="https://opus.lib.uts.edu.au/bitstream/10453/126332/1/CICJ.pdf">years of advocacy</a> from the disability community. It gave voice to people with disability to tell their stories of violence, so policymakers and broader community would listen and take action. Segregation emerged as a key driver of violence.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/final-report">report</a> makes 222 recommendations to improve laws, policies and practices for a more just and inclusive society. They include a new disability rights act, including access to remedies when people experience human rights breaches. </p>
<p>The final report recommends disability service providers offer redress to people with disability who experience harm while receiving their services. This could include “apologies, compensation, reimbursement of fees, credits for services and other practical remedies or supports”.</p>
<p>However, there are no recommendations that governments should also offer apologies or redress. In addition, a call for governments and disability services to look back and repair the harm caused by century-long policies of segregation and institutionalisation is missing from the final report. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/disability-royal-commissioners-disagreed-over-phasing-out-special-schools-that-leaves-segregation-on-the-table-214706">Disability royal commissioners disagreed over phasing out 'special schools' – that leaves segregation on the table</a>
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<h2>What do ‘institutionalisation’ and ‘segregation’ mean?</h2>
<p>Institutionalisation involves grouping people with disability together – such as in residential, educational or work settings – and segregating them (keeping them separate) from people without disability. </p>
<p>All people with disability have the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no5-article-19-right-live">human right</a> to live independently in the community regardless of how high their support needs are. This means providing access to services and support so people with disability can exercise choice and control over their lives and make all decisions concerning their lives.</p>
<p>In 20th century Australia, people with disability were institutionalised in many large residential settings. They were <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2023-05/Research%20Report%20-%20Disability%20in%20Australia%20-%20Shadows%2C%20struggles%20and%20successes.pdf">subjected</a> to </p>
<ul>
<li>physical and sexual violence </li>
<li>medical neglect </li>
<li>use of <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/publications/restrictive-practices-pathway-elimination">restrictive practices</a> (such as sedation, locking people in a room or restraining them in a bed or chair) </li>
<li>sterilisation (such as women having their tubes tied)</li>
<li>and unpaid work. </li>
</ul>
<p>Eventually, Australian government policies prompted the gradual closure of many large residential settings.</p>
<p>Shutting down institutions has not put an end to injustices. Follow-up processes have not been established to <a href="https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/disability-institutions/">recognise and redress the experiences</a> of people who lived there. </p>
<p>This institutional history intersects with Australia’s violence towards <a href="https://www.daru.org.au/resource/culture-is-inclusion">First Nations people with disability</a> and with <a href="https://www.eugenicsarchive.ca/around-the-world?id=530b8d09acea8cf99a000001">broader practices of eugenics</a> (discriminatory “planned breeding”). </p>
<p>People with disability remain traumatised by their experiences, yet governments and charities have not been called to account. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-disability-royal-commission-recommendations-could-fix-some-of-the-worst-living-conditions-but-thats-just-the-start-213466">The disability royal commission recommendations could fix some of the worst living conditions – but that's just the start</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<h2>Problems today</h2>
<p>Today, many people – especially those with intellectual disability – live in <a href="https://www.inclusionaustralia.org.au/story/group-homes/">group homes</a> where segregation, social isolation, violence and lack of choice in their daily lives are <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">a common reality</a>. </p>
<p>Harms such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/apr/26/disabled-australian-women-face-forced-sterilisation-abortion-and-contraception-health-groups-say">sterilisation</a>, restrictive practices and below-minimum wages continue. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission heard how <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/public-hearings/public-hearing-3">group homes</a> replicate the harm of large residential settings, with <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases/report-finds-service-provider-failed-prevent-violence-and-abuse-against-residents-group-homes">operators</a> failing to prevent violence and avoiding accountability. </p>
<p>People with disability have called for an end to <a href="https://pwd.org.au/pwda-calls-for-a-radical-response-to-end-segregation-and-discrimination/">segregation</a> in housing and other aspects of their lives. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-with-disabilities-in-group-homes-are-suffering-shocking-abuse-new-housing-models-could-prevent-harm-197989">People with disabilities in group homes are suffering shocking abuse. New housing models could prevent harm</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Recognising wrongs</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">Reparations</a> are actions to recognise and respond to systemic wrongs. They might involve compensation, restitution (such as returning money or property) or rehabilitation (health or legal services). Reparations can seek satisfaction (with apologies and memorials) and guarantees something won’t happen again via law reform or human rights education. </p>
<p>In Australia, we’ve seen <a href="https://www.nationalredress.gov.au/">compensation, rehabilitation</a> and apologies for <a href="https://www.childabuseroyalcommissionresponse.gov.au/national-apology">institutional child sexual abuse</a>. </p>
<p>We have also seen <a href="https://www.aboriginalaffairs.nsw.gov.au/healing-and-reparations/stolen-generations/reparations-scheme/">reparations</a> and an <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/national-apology#:%7E:text=On%2013%20February%202008%20Prime%20Minister%20Kevin%20Rudd,government%20policies%20of%20forced%20child%20removal%20and%20assimilation.">apology</a> for members of the Stolen Generations.</p>
<p>People with disability are entitled to reparations as a <a href="https://www.hhrjournal.org/2022/06/reparations-for-harms-experienced-in-residential-aged-care/">human right</a>, including for <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/legal-standards-and-guidelines/crpdc5-guidelines-deinstitutionalization-including">institutionalisation</a>. </p>
<p>There are overseas examples of reparations for people with disability, including <a href="https://www.eugenicsarchive.ca/encyclopedia?id=5554c14735ae9d9e7f0000a2">compensation for sterilisation</a>, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-apologizes-for-abuse-of-people-with-disabilities/a-66783019">apologies for disability institutionalisation</a>, <a href="https://truthsofinstitutionalization.ca/">public education</a> and <a href="https://www.mass.gov/info-details/special-commission-on-state-institutions-statute">truth-telling</a>. </p>
<h2>What do people with disability want?</h2>
<p>Co-author Jack Kelly describes the ongoing effects of institutionalisation:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>People with disability were not seen as part of local communities when they lived in institutions. This has to change and still takes time. I think it is really important that we address the history of what has been going on and say; ‘Sorry that we didn’t look after your loved ones’ and ‘Sorry we didn’t value you as a person’. It is time to work with people with disability towards a national apology from the government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Jack’s statement <a href="https://wwda.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/ACDA_Sub_Sen_Inquiry_Violence_Institutions.pdf">resonates</a> with broader calls by the disability community for reparations. </p>
<p>In 2021, the Council for Intellectual Disability demanded withdrawal of an <a href="https://cid.org.au/our-campaigns/peat-island/">application for tourist re-zoning</a> of Peat Island (the site of a disability institution for 99 years) and for memorialisation and truth-telling. </p>
<p>There have been recent calls for <a href="https://www.livedexperiencejustice.au/">apology and truth-telling</a> in the mental health system and reparations for <a href="https://wwda.org.au/2023/04/disability-royal-commission-wwdas-submission-on-sexual-and-reproductive-rights/">sterilisation</a>.</p>
<p>Our research explored what people with intellectual disability want the public to know about large residential settings. </p>
<p>We <a href="https://cid.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/UTS-ER-Remembering-Disability-Institutions-digital-accessible.pdf">found</a> people with intellectual disability support the wider community learning more of what was experienced in these places. Sharing this history is an important step towards repairing past wrongs, ending institutionalisation, segregation and exclusion, and realising equality and inclusion. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CxEZlRzymHM","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-shove-us-off-like-were-rubbish-what-people-with-intellectual-disability-told-us-about-their-local-community-179479">'Don't shove us off like we're rubbish': what people with intellectual disability told us about their local community</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A way forward</h2>
<p>People with disability, <a href="https://theconversation.com/dont-shove-us-off-like-were-rubbish-what-people-with-intellectual-disability-told-us-about-their-local-community-179479">including</a> those with intellectual disability, must lead reparation design and development. </p>
<p>The disability royal commission has highlighted systemic violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation in today’s Australia. These criminal practices reinforce a century-long history of injustice from institutionalisation. </p>
<p>Now is the time to act to ensure this does not continue. Reparations are one way to do this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214479/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Kelly has contributed to projects that have been funded by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Linda Steele has received funding from Women with Disabilities Australia, Council for Intellectual Disability, Dementia Australia Research Foundation, Australian Association of Gerontology, and Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation. She is on the board of management of Intellectual Disability Rights Service. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillippa Carnemolla has received funding for previous projects from the National Disability Insurance Agency, National Disability Services and The Achieve Foundation. She is a Director for the Centre for Universal Design Australia.</span></em></p>The disability royal commission recommended providers offer redress to people who experience harm while in their care. But reparations for past harms were not addressed.Jack Francis Kelly, Honorary Research Fellow, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology SydneyLinda Steele, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Technology SydneyPhillippa Carnemolla, Associate Professor, School of the Built Environment, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2083272023-07-04T13:26:56Z2023-07-04T13:26:56ZBelgium’s AfricaMuseum has a dark colonial past – it’s making slow progress in confronting this history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533840/original/file-20230624-80593-c4qk77.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DRC Prime Minister Jean-Michel Lukonde (L) at Belgium's AfricaMuseum in 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jasper Jacobs via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/belgiums-africamuseum-has-a-dark-colonial-past-its-making-slow-progress-in-confronting-this-history-208327&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p>Racist displays and stories remain on display in several western European museums. They include grotesque objects depicting African people as “savage” and “wild”. Narratives of a “continent without history” and fantasies of European superiority are still told in ethnographic museums, like the <a href="https://www.humboldtforum.org/en/">Humboldt Forum in Berlin</a> and the <a href="https://www.quaibranly.fr/en/">Musée du quai Branly in Paris</a>.</p>
<p>These museums have been criticised by scholars and activists since the 1970s. Their handling of objects looted during the colonial period, especially from Africa, is seen as an indicator of the political relations between Europe and African nations. </p>
<p>Criticism ranges from the illegitimate acquisition of the objects to the often-racist representation of the African continent and its inhabitants. It also includes the lack of participation by African and diasporic actors.</p>
<p>After initial hesitation, Belgium, a former colonial power, <a href="https://theconversation.com/retracing-belgiums-dark-past-in-the-congo-and-attempts-to-forge-deeper-ties-184903">opened itself</a> to debate about reparations, justice and a common future with its African partners in the late 1990s. </p>
<p>This change in attitude was accelerated by mounting pressure from the <a href="https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1796.black-lives-matter-in-belgium-june-july-2020.html">Black Lives Matter movement in Belgium</a>. International advances by other former colonial powers like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/27/world/americas/colonial-reparations.html">France, Germany and Great Britain</a> in the restitution debate also created impetus. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/discover/history">AfricaMuseum</a> in the Tervuren suburb is at the centre of these debates in Belgium. It’s an institution in the process of repairing its troubled history. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An long shot of a beige building with its reflection showing in a pool of water" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533646/original/file-20230623-25-2qgxwz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The main building of the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren built in the 1900s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a white and privileged researcher who focuses on colonial memory, racism and anti-colonial movements in Europe, my perspective on the AfricaMuseum is divided. For more than 10 years, the museum has been part of <a href="http://iwk-jena.uni-jena.de/julien-bobineau/">my cultural studies research</a>. In my view, the museum is marked by a dusty past and has shown little evidence of post-colonial self-reflection. On the other hand, there are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65827002">serious efforts</a> to change. </p>
<h2>Colonial looting</h2>
<p>The AfricaMuseum’s forerunner was initiated in 1897 by the Belgian king <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium">Leopold II</a> (1835-1909). It was a colonial human zoo within the Brussels World’s Fair. A Congolese village was recreated in Tervuren “exhibiting” 60 Congolese residents. Seven of them didn’t survive the exhibition, which lasted several months. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A sculpture of a man drumming while another one holds up a spear ready to attack another man who is lying on the ground. They are in the centre of a room that has knives and swords on display on the walls" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533647/original/file-20230623-25-vgag2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racist depictions of Africans in the museum in the 1920s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1910, the space opened as the Museum of the Belgian Congo and presented ethnographic collections. The colonial institution initially served the purpose of legitimising the <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/1447211359">brutal colonial rule</a> in the Congo Basin. It promoted the so-called “civilising mission” in Africa among the Belgian population. </p>
<p>It presented an alleged European superiority, underlined with pseudo-scientific methods and a racist representation of African cultures. </p>
<p>The exhibited objects were mostly looted from colonised territories by Belgian officials, the military and private persons. </p>
<p>There was <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/pdf">little awareness</a> of these material and immaterial injustices in Belgium until the late 1990s. To this day, some <a href="https://www.memoiresducongo.be/en/">conservative positions</a> glorify the Belgian colonial period as a justified and philanthropic undertaking. </p>
<p>Even after the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence on 30 June 1960, the museum retained its original concept under the name Royal Museum for Central Africa. It exuded a peculiar kind of colonial “nostalgia”. As late as 2001, the US anthropologist Jean Muteba Rahier described the museum as <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/summary">a colonial place frozen in time</a>. </p>
<p>In 2013, the museum was <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/discover/renovation">closed for extensive renovations</a>. It reopened as the AfricaMuseum in December 2018, with the then director Guido Gryseels <a href="https://www.exhibitionsinternational.be/documents/catalog/objects/PDF/9789085867814_01.pdf#page=4">saying</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the museum has distanced itself from colonialism as a form of government and accepts responsibility for the part it played in the past in disseminating stereotypes about Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Today, the AfricaMuseum holds over 125,000 ethnographic objects. It has 300,000 geological specimens, 8,000 musical instruments and nearly 10 million biological exhibits. It also holds sound and film recordings. A few human remains are among the museum’s collections. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Wooden sculptures on display behind a glass case." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533652/original/file-20230623-6861-3sw7hp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Congolese sculptures on display at the AfricaMuseum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julien Bobineau</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The origin and exact circumstances of the acquisition of these objects remain largely unexplained. It can be assumed that most of the collection was illegally looted during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Belgian-Congo">colonial period</a>. </p>
<h2>Recognising African heritage</h2>
<p>Closely related to the question of restitution is a revision of the way Africa and Africans are represented in ethnographic museums. The AfricaMuseum attempted to address this in its 2013-2018 renovation. </p>
<p>Yet, some objects remain placed in a context that allows for a pejorative view of Africa. This is evidenced by the combination of the depiction of Congolese culture and the natural history of humankind in one space.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/29/arts/emmanuel-macron-africa.html">French president Emmanuel Macron</a> triggered more debate over restitution while in Burkina Faso in 2017, the AfricaMuseum focused on addressing the origin of its objects. Reparation and representation of African and diasporic voices became a priority. </p>
<p>This was supported by <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/117289/parliament-approves-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past">political debates</a> in the Belgian parliament in 2021 and 2022. They led to the formulation of <a href="https://restitutionbelgium.be/">ethical principles for restitution</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en/about_us/restitution">A new law was passed</a> that provides a framework for the return of looted objects. This is a starting point for a redefinition of Belgian-Congolese relations. </p>
<h2>Early results</h2>
<p>Belgium has since sent the Democratic Republic of Congo a <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/de/about_us/restitution">draft bilateral restitution treaty</a>. It proposes, for example, a joint commission to coordinate scientific investigations into the origin of objects in Belgium’s possession. </p>
<p>In June 2021, the ownership rights of almost <a href="https://heritagetribune.eu/belgium/africa-museum-set-to-start-gradual-return-of-looted-artefacts-to-congo/">800 looted objects</a> from the AfricaMuseum were transferred to the Congolese state – though they still haven’t fully returned to Kinshasa. </p>
<p>In February 2022, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo presented Congolese prime minister Jean-Michel Lukonde with a list of more than <a href="https://observer.com/2022/03/restitution-ceremony-at-belgiums-africamuseum-precedes-eu-au-summit/">84,000 artefacts</a> from the Congo. Those artefacts have been in Belgium’s possession since colonisation and are now to be examined with a view to possible restitution.</p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>The restitution of looted objects from former colonies in Africa is an essential component of a post-colonial reparation. </p>
<p>Some European politicians, museum directors and scholars have pointed to an alleged lack of storage facilities in Africa. This argument shouldn’t count. </p>
<p>The vast majority of artefacts were seized from their original context and only transformed into “art objects” in European museums. In Germany, for example, debate flared up this year as to whether restituted Benin bronzes should become the private property of the royal family of Benin – the legitimate owners – <a href="https://english.elpais.com/international/2023-05-19/legitimate-concerns-or-neocolonialism-germany-expresses-worry-about-the-fate-of-the-benin-bronzes-following-their-restitution-to-nigeria.html">or be exhibited in Nigerian museums</a>. This shouldn’t be Germany’s concern.</p>
<p>To put restitution into practice, four things are needed now:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>humility on the European side</p></li>
<li><p>a deeper willingness for cooperation</p></li>
<li><p>funds</p></li>
<li><p>transparent and open dialogue. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>The new Belgian path shows that this seems possible, though there’s still a long way to go.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julien Bobineau does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The restitution of looted objects from former colonies in Africa is an essential component of post-colonial reparation.Julien Bobineau, Assistant Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität JenaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1882682023-06-13T12:30:17Z2023-06-13T12:30:17ZThe overlooked story of the incarceration of Japanese Americans from Hawaii during World War II<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529104/original/file-20230530-23-br74q4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C30%2C742%2C336&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A 1945 photograph of detainees at the Honouliuli Internment Camp.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/AssetDetail/bedc8c747d3d46ae9ffe6368e16eb64c">courtesy of National Park Service</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the months and years following Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. government incarcerated a large number of Japanese American civilians from the U.S. mainland. </p>
<p>Often forgotten are the Japanese Americans who lived in Hawaii and were also forced from their homes and imprisoned in Hawaii and on the U.S. mainland. </p>
<p>Their forced relocation and incarceration has been largely omitted from the dominant narrative of Japanese American internment in the U.S. during World War II. Additionally, attempts by governments to provide redress to those individuals and memorialize their treatment have been slower than for individuals interned on the U.S. mainland. </p>
<h2>Internment in the US mainland and Hawaii</h2>
<p>In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt <a href="https://tupress.temple.edu/books/the-rise-and-fall-of-america-s-concentration-camp-law#:%7E:text=It%20restricted%20the%20freedom%20of,it%20was%20repealed%20in%201971.">issued</a> <a href="https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9066">Executive Order 9066</a>, which allowed for the creation of U.S. military areas from which people could be excluded. </p>
<p>Although the executive order made no mention of any ethnic group, it implicitly <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shameful-stories-of-environmental-injustices-at-japanese-american-incarceration-camps-during-wwii-174011">targeted Japanese Americans</a> because of widespread xenophobic fear that they would spy for the Japanese government or engage in acts of sabotage within the U.S.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd of men gathers behind President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he signs a paper." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/444560/original/file-20220204-17-keykob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On Dec. 8, 1941, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the U.S. declaration of war against Japan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cabinet-members-watch-with-mixed-emotions-as-president-news-photo/514080362?adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, almost 120,000 civilians of Japanese ancestry, the majority of whom were from the West Coast and were American citizens, were <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-1-4614-9185-9">incarcerated</a> in camps by the government on suspicion that they <a href="https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295984513/judgment-without-trial/">posed a threat</a> to U.S. security on basis of their ancestry.</p>
<p>In Hawaii, which had been colonized by the U.S. in 1898, the incarceration of Japanese Americans was much smaller in scale than that on the mainland.</p>
<p>Given that Japanese Americans <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067648">made up</a> more than one third of Hawaii’s total population during World War II and thus a sizable <a href="https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295984513/judgment-without-trial/">wartime</a> labor force, U.S. forces incarcerated about <a href="https://www.nativebookshawaii.org/products/bayonets-in-paradise-martial-law-in-hawai%CA%BBi-during-world-war-ii">2,000 Japanese Americans</a> from Hawaii. These people <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psq.12695">included</a> community figures, Japanese language teachers and Shinto priests.</p>
<p>Additionally, hundreds of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, although not imprisoned, were <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067648">forcibly removed</a> from their homes, taken to other parts of the territory and, at times, not permitted to return to their homes.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="The official government instructions on internment of Japanese Americans." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528699/original/file-20230528-200990-ntvv6c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1177&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">With the authorization of the U.S. government, the U.S. military rounded up and incarcerated Japanese Americans shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-internment-of-japanese-americans-was-the-world-war-ii-news-photo/1354474652?adppopup=true">History/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Honouliuli Internment Camp, known as Hell Valley among internees, <a href="https://www.nativebookshawaii.org/products/bayonets-in-paradise-martial-law-in-hawai%CA%BBi-during-world-war-ii#:%7E:text=Bayonets%20in%20Paradise%3A%20Martial%20Law%20in%20Hawai%CA%BBi%20During%20World%20War%20II,-%2445.95&text=Hardcover%2C%20489%20pp.,Hawai%CA%BBi%20during%20World%20War%20II.">opened</a> in 1943 on the island of Oahu and was the largest confinement site in Hawaii.</p>
<p>Unlike other camps in Hawaii, it housed civilians and prisoners of war. During its three years of operation, the camp <a href="https://www.nativebookshawaii.org/products/bayonets-in-paradise-martial-law-in-hawai%CA%BBi-during-world-war-ii#:%7E:text=Bayonets%20in%20Paradise%3A%20Martial%20Law%20in%20Hawai%CA%BBi%20During%20World%20War%20II,-%2445.95&text=Hardcover%2C%20489%20pp.,Hawai%CA%BBi%20during%20World%20War%20II.">held around 320</a> Japanese American civilians.</p>
<p>The camps in Hawaii, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-shameful-stories-of-environmental-injustices-at-japanese-american-incarceration-camps-during-wwii-174011">as on the mainland</a>, were crowded, monitored by armed guards and surrounded by barbed wire fences.</p>
<p>As a result of their detention, <a href="https://www.archives.gov/research/japanese-americans/justice-denied">former internees have experienced</a> mental health issues alongside heightened rates of suicide and early death.</p>
<h2>Official US redress</h2>
<p>Following <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-tragedy-of-democracy/9780231129237">years of advocacy</a> by Japanese American organizations, President Jimmy Carter authorized the creation of the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/111th-congress/house-report/666/1">Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians</a> in 1980.</p>
<p>Three years later, the commission <a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/24746908">issued recommendations</a>, including that the U.S. government apologize and provide reparations of US$20,000 to Japanese American survivors, including Japanese Americans from Hawaii.</p>
<p>Despite his <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/psq.12695">initial opposition </a>to the commission’s recommendation that the U.S. government provide reparations, in 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442">Civil Liberties Act</a>, which provided a formal apology and reparations of $20,000 to many former internees.</p>
<p>At the signing, <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-signing-bill-providing-restitution-wartime-internment-japanese-american">Reagan referred</a> to Japanese American internment as a “grave wrong” that was undertaken “without trial … based solely on race.” </p>
<p>Despite this, he made no reference to the fact that the civilian camps were created and run by the U.S. government and Army, nor did he recognize that these actions constituted human rights abuses. </p>
<p>Furthermore, upon its creation, the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/100th-congress/house-bill/442">Civil Liberties Act</a> had a significant flaw – it excluded hundreds of affected Japanese Americans from Hawaii from receiving that restitution.</p>
<p>That oversight was corrected in 1992, when <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p067648">President George H.W. Bush</a> signed into law the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/102nd-congress/house-bill/4551/text">Civil Liberties Act Amendments</a>, which broadened eligibility for restitution.</p>
<h2>Selective memorialization</h2>
<p>Since that period, U.S. government and nongovernment organizations have selectively memorialized Japanese American incarceration by designating some prison camps as national historical sites and creating mainland-centric memorials. </p>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://www.njamemorial.org/visit">National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II</a> in Washington, D.C., created in 2000, <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=4111">includes multiple walls</a> inscribed with the names of all mainland camps and the number of individuals interned there, but makes no reference to specific incarceration camps in Hawaii.</p>
<p>That said, the monument, which was organized by a Japanese American NGO, does <a href="https://www.nps.gov/places/japanese-american-memorial-to-patriotism-during-world-war-ii.htm">include an inscription</a> which recognizes that Japanese Americans were incarcerated in the mainland and Hawaii. </p>
<p>Additionally, between 1992 and 2008, mainland camps <a href="https://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm">Manzanar </a>and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/tule/index.htm">Tule Lake</a> in California and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/miin/index.htm">Minidoka</a> in Idaho were designated as national historical sites or monuments by U.S. presidents or Congress. However, it was not until 2015 that President Barack Obama <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/24/presidential-proclamation-establishment-honouliuli-national-monument">designated</a> the Honouliuli Internment Camp a national monument. </p>
<p>This selective memorialization is unsurprising given that Hawaii, like other territories colonized by the U.S., is often <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/how-to-hide-an-empire-9781473545335">omitted</a> from accounts of American history. Nonetheless, such memorialization is problematic, as it reinforces the dominant narrative of Japanese American incarceration that <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-tragedy-of-democracy/9780231129237">focuses on</a> the mainland camps and West Coast Japanese Americans and obscures the imprisonment of Japanese Americans from Hawaii. </p>
<p>The bombing of Pearl Harbor has become <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/a-date-which-will-live#:%7E:text=December%207%2C%201941%E2%80%94the%20date,to%20them%20are%20hardly%20settled">ingrained in American memory</a> and, as a result, for many Americans, Hawaii symbolizes white American victimhood. </p>
<p>But as the incarceration of Japanese Americans from Hawaii demonstrates, Hawaii is also a symbol of human rights abuses committed by the U.S. government against Japanese Americans.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188268/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Tasevski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When US President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, he paved the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans on the mainland and HawaiiOlivia Tasevski, Tutor in International Relations and History, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2068232023-06-01T12:30:56Z2023-06-01T12:30:56ZReparations over formerly enslaved people has a long history: 4 essential reads on why the idea remains unresolved<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529469/original/file-20230531-22271-aukjo2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1066%2C201%2C5643%2C4255&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Black man holds up a sign during a Reparations Task Force meeting in Los Angeles, California on Sept. 22, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/los-angeles-californiasept-22-2022los-angeles-long-time-news-photo/1243475910?adppopup=true">Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The debate about reparations to descendants of enslaved people rages on.</p>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/reparations-california-payments-slavery-racism-discrimination-a7d4abb30e8395c805a9f2cc0586bf91">In California</a>, the state’s reparations task force has estimated that the descendants of former enslaved people living in California should receive a payment of $1.2 million per person. </p>
<p>While the issue of reparations is nothing new, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/10/slavery-reparations-california-newsom-00096211">California Governor Gavin Newsome</a> created the task force in 2020 and called for it to offer solutions to the “structural racism and bias built into and permeating throughout our democratic and economic institutions.”</p>
<p>So far, Newsome has remained quiet on his task force’s recommendations and is awaiting its final report, expected on July 1, 2023. </p>
<p>Several scholars of U.S. slavery and the history of reparations have written articles explaining what the ongoing debate has been about since the idea first emerged after the Civil War. Here we spotlight four examples of those scholars’ work:</p>
<h2>1. Despite gains, persistent racial gaps remain</h2>
<p>While researching his book “<a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674019430&content=reviews">Making Whole What Has Been Smashed</a>,” John Torpey learned that the idea of compensating freed slaves or their descendants has never really gained much traction in the United States.</p>
<p>A driving force behind the persistence of reparations talk is just how stark the racial differences remain, <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">Torpey wrote</a>.</p>
<p>Compared to whites, Torpey explained, “blacks tend to have lower educational attainment, rates of home ownership and life expectancy but higher rates of poverty, incarceration, unemployment and life-threatening diseases.” </p>
<p>As a result, the wealth gap between whites and Blacks remains very large, Torpey noted, “and wage inequality is likely making it worse.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-40-acres-and-a-mule-to-lbj-to-the-2020-election-a-brief-history-of-slavery-reparation-promises-114547">From ‘40 acres and a mule’ to LBJ to the 2020 election, a brief history of slavery reparation promises</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>2. Righting past wrongs</h2>
<p>Anne Bailey <a href="https://annecbailey.net/">has researched slavery</a> for the past three decades and has concluded that there are many rationales for reparations. </p>
<p>For one, <a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-reparations-is-it-time-for-the-us-to-pay-its-debt-for-the-legacy-of-slavery-151972">Bailey wrote</a>, “There has never been a leveling of the playing field, or payments for the debt of unpaid labor over 250 years of slavery.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, she explained, Black contribution to the wealth of America has not been acknowledged or given its due.</p>
<p>“Paying reparations to Americans of African descent could help the U.S. reclaim some moral leadership on the global stage,” Bailey wrote. “The U.S. is not the only country in the world with human rights abuses then or now, but it can be one of the few countries in the world that truly addresses these wrongs.”</p>
<p>In other words, Bailey concluded, the U.S. can lead by example.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/revisiting-reparations-is-it-time-for-the-us-to-pay-its-debt-for-the-legacy-of-slavery-151972">Revisiting reparations: Is it time for the US to pay its debt for the legacy of slavery?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>3. Slave owners received reparations</h2>
<p>As a professor of public policy who has studied reparations, <a href="https://expertfile.com/experts/thomas.craemer/thomas-craemer-phd">Thomas Craemer</a> estimates the losses from unpaid wages and lost inheritances to Black descendants of the enslaved in America at around US$20 trillion in 2021 dollars.</p>
<p>“But what often gets forgotten by those who oppose reparations is that payouts for slavery have been made before,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">Craemer wrote </a>. “But those payments went to former slave owners and their descendants, not the enslaved or their legal heirs.”</p>
<p>A prominent example is the so-called “Haitian Independence Debt” that burdened an independent Haiti with reparation payments to former slave owners in France. Another was the British government, which paid reparations totaling the equivalent of about $429 billion in 2021 to slave owners when it abolished slavery in 1833.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A 1791 depiction of fighting between French troops and Haitian revolutionaries." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/386545/original/file-20210225-19-iu8yn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Haitians had to pay for their independence.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/combat-entre-les-esclaves-et-larm%C3%A9e-fran%C3%A7aise-lors-de-la-news-photo/1291357942?adppopup=true">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the U.S., President Abraham Lincoln signed into law the “Act for the Release of certain Persons held to Service or Labor within the District of Columbia” on April 16, 1862.</p>
<p>It gave former slave owners $300 per enslaved person set free.</p>
<p>The act also provided for an emigration incentive of $100 – around $2,683 in 2021 dollars – if the former enslaved person agreed to permanently leave the United States.</p>
<p>In contrast,“ Craemer wrote, "the formerly enslaved received nothing if they decided to stay in the United States.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-was-a-time-reparations-were-actually-paid-out-just-not-to-formerly-enslaved-people-152522">There was a time reparations were actually paid out – just not to formerly enslaved people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Germany reparations to Holocaust survivors</h2>
<p>As a professor of political science who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pGUCXiUAAAAJ&hl=en">Bernd Reiter</a> has examined how Germany dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Instead of seeking to erase the Holocaust from its history, the German government has paid since the end of World War II the equivalent of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the World Jewish Congress, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations.</p>
<p>“The German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice,” <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-germany-atoned-for-the-holocaust-the-us-can-pay-reparations-for-slavery-119505">Reiter wrote</a>. “The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-germany-atoned-for-the-holocaust-the-us-can-pay-reparations-for-slavery-119505">If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives</em>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206823/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Former enslaved persons have never received a dime for their labor. Nor have their descendants received reparations for the legacy of slavery.
Should the descendants be paid? By whom and how much?Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2055972023-05-18T11:32:43Z2023-05-18T11:32:43ZSouth African diamonds adorn the crown of King Charles – why they’re unlikely to be returned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/526284/original/file-20230515-25052-37h69q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">King Charles III And Queen Camilla on their coronation day.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Christopher Furlong/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar7HGBg5o3k">Opera singer Pretty Yende</a> and foreign minister <a href="https://twitter.com/DIRCO_ZA/status/1654841605726040064?lang=en">Naledi Pandor</a> were not the only South African presence at the coronation of King Charles III. Also there were the stones cut from the <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/the-cullinan-diamond">Cullinan diamond</a>, the largest gem-quality rough diamond ever found.</p>
<p>The Cullinan, named after Thomas Cullinan, the chairman of the mining company that found it in South Africa, <a href="https://www.capetowndiamondmuseum.org/blog/2017/01/worlds-largest-diamond-the-cullinan/">was mined in 1905</a> and was bought by the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Transvaal">Transvaal</a> colony’s government for presentation to King Edward VII in 1907. It was cut into <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/trails/the-crown-jewels/cullinan-diamond-cleaving-of-the-second-largest-portion">nine stones</a> and another 97 fragments.</p>
<p>The largest of these, Cullinan 1, known as the Star of Africa, was set at the top of the sceptre presented to Charles during the coronation ceremony. Cullinan 2 is set in the front of the crown he wore. Other stones are in the possession of Britain’s royal family too or on display in the Tower of London.</p>
<p>The coronation has led to renewed calls for the return of the stones to South Africa. These calls are part of the growing demands by former colonial people for the return of the cultural artefacts removed from their countries by colonial powers.</p>
<p>What are the justifications for the return of the Cullinan diamonds? What are the complications? And what is the likelihood of return?</p>
<h2>The justification</h2>
<p>Prior to the coronation, there were calls for the return of the diamonds to South Africa. The Economic Freedom Fighters, the country’s third largest political party, led in <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/stolen-star-of-africa-still-flaunted-by-british-11">calling for them to come home</a>. And so has African Transformation Movement’s member of parliament, <a href="https://www.voaafrica.com/a/s-africa-wants-buckingham-bling-returned/7078534.html">Vuyolwethu Zungula</a>. In similar fashion, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/05/05/africa/star-of-africa-diamond-intl/index.html">Mothusi Kamanga</a>, a Johannesburg lawyer and activist, promoted an online petition for the diamonds to be returned. It quickly attracted 8,000 signatures. </p>
<p>These demands fall under a much wider global <a href="https://theconversation.com/restitution-of-looted-african-art-just-continues-colonial-policies-much-more-is-at-stake-191386">conversation</a> about reparations for items forcefully appropriated as spoils of war and cultural domination. <a href="https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/africa-sees-some-artifacts-returned-seeks-many-more/6685846.html">Various items</a> have been <a href="https://theconversation.com/germany-is-returning-nigerias-looted-benin-bronzes-why-its-not-nearly-enough-165349">returned</a> to their countries of origin by European universities, museums and other bodies which had acquired them over decades past.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/patrice-lumumbas-tooth-represents-plunder-resilience-and-reparation-186241">Patrice Lumumba’s tooth represents plunder, resilience and reparation</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>Activists view their moral case for the return of the diamonds as unanswerable, but it runs up against many complications.</p>
<h2>Complications: ‘given’ not ‘looted’</h2>
<p>Let’s go back to 1907, when <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/louis-botha">Louis Botha</a> was prime minister of the Transvaal, one of the two <a href="https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2018/06/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-orange-free-state-and-transvaal-in-southern-africa/">Boer Republics</a> which had been defeated by Britain in the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/second-anglo-boer-war-1899-1902">South African War, 1899-1902</a>, but to which <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Botha">“self-government” had now been returned</a>. Botha now suggested buying the Cullinan diamond for Edward VII as <a href="https://www.capetowndiamondmuseum.org/about-diamonds/famous-diamonds/">a token</a> of the loyalty of the people of the Transvaal to the king. </p>
<p>At face value, this is odd, because Botha had served as a Boer general in the South African War, which had culminated in Boer defeat, but only after a drawn out struggle which had left South Africa devastated. </p>
<p>About 14,000 Boer troops had lost their lives, and some 28,000 Boer men, women and children died in <a href="https://theconversation.com/concentration-camps-in-the-south-african-war-here-are-the-real-facts-112006">concentration camps</a>, incarcerated by the British to stop them from helping the Boer’s guerrilla forces. Yet Botha refers to the “loyalty and attachment” of the Transvaal “people” (by which he almost certainly meant only white people). </p>
<p>After the war, Botha teamed up with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/18/opinion/jan-smuts-south-africa.html">Jan Smuts</a>, another former Boer general. Smuts was instrumental in arguing the case in London for the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jan-Smuts">return of self-government</a> to the former Boer republic of the Transvaal, which after its defeat had been transformed into a colony. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/benin-bronzes-what-is-the-significance-of-their-repatriation-to-nigeria-171444">Benin bronzes: What is the significance of their repatriation to Nigeria?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>White settler regimes were regarded as troublesome by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Whitehall-Palace">Whitehall</a>, which was pleased to get rid of them. But self-government was not independence. Britain remained largely in control of foreign policy, and importantly, could declare its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/dominion-British-Commonwealth">“dominions”</a> (as these self-governing territories were termed) as at war if Britain was dragged into an armed conflict. </p>
<p>Both these former Boer generals were realists. They recognised the realities of Boer defeat and the ruin it had brought to South Africa. After the war they had come to preach a gospel of “conciliation”, whose rationale was to unite Boers and Britons into a single white nation, while repairing relations with Britain, whose aid they regarded as necessary for reconstruction. </p>
<p>They also had in mind the Transvaal as heading a drive for the making of a united South Africa – a long-held policy of Britain since the mid-19th century. In any case, Botha and Smuts regarded South Africa’s membership of the Empire and reliance on the British navy as necessary for its defence.</p>
<p>We may question why this persuaded Botha to offer a valuable diamond to the king. Perhaps it was merely gratitude for the grant of self governance. Perhaps it was one of the more spectacular acts of international brown-nosing, to secure Britain’s goodwill towards South Africa.</p>
<p>But in the present debate, it introduces the complication that legally speaking, the Cullinan diamonds were given by a forerunner government of South Africa, rather than having been “looted”.</p>
<h2>Likelihood of return</h2>
<p>Calls for the return of the diamonds, especially when not backed by any official request by the South African government, are unlikely to make any impression in London. Although King Charles has encouraged investigation into the way <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/07/king-charles-urged-take-some-responsibility-royal-slavery-links">the monarchy has benefited from slavery</a>, his enthusiasm is unlikely to extend to the physical deconstruction of the crown jewels. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-west-is-morally-bound-to-offer-reparations-for-slavery-153544">Why the West is morally bound to offer reparations for slavery</a>
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<p>Such decisions would have to be made by the government of the day. Any thought of doing so would play into the hands of the right wing of the <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/">Conservative Party</a>, and its determination to provoke <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/19/tories-migrants-fear-immigration-culture-war">“culture wars”</a> around whiteness and nationalism.</p>
<p>More fundamentally, former colonial powers are <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-the-relationship-between-namibia-and-germany-sunk-to-a-new-low-121329">wary of issuing apologies for sins past</a>, as taking responsibility for past crimes against humanity implies legal obligations to make reparations, and this they are determined to avoid.</p>
<p>Although Africans were never consulted, British governments are likely to insist that the Cullinan diamonds were not stolen but freely given by Louis Botha. If South Africa wants the diamonds back, it is going to have to put up a very determined fight.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roger Southall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Activists view their moral case for the return of the diamonds as unanswerable, but it runs up against many complications.Roger Southall, Professor of Sociology, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2040002023-04-27T16:54:41Z2023-04-27T16:54:41ZWhat the Crown Jewels tell us about exploitation and the quest for reparations — Podcast<p>Although King Charles will have a low-key ceremony on his coronation day this May 6, the Crown Jewels will still figure prominently. An exploration of the story of the jewels tells a tale of brutal exploitation, rape and the original looting. Join us on <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/coronation-day-what-the-story-of-the-crown-jewels-can-tell-us-about-exploitation-and-the-quest-for-reparations"><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> to follow the jewels. </p>
<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/772104f6-caa7-4803-a167-f6d0eec48d61?dark=true"></iframe>
<p>Much of what was called the British Empire was built from stolen riches — globally — and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=776527">much of that was from India.</a> </p>
<p>In fact, India was such an abundant contributor to the Crown that at the time of its occupation of South Asia, Britain called India the Jewel in its Crown. </p>
<p>India was called this because of its location — easy access to the silk route, but mostly because of its vast human and natural resources: things like cotton, and tea and of course its abundance of jewels.</p>
<p>Literally, the brightest jewel in Britain’s Crown is the Koh-i-Noor diamond. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523065/original/file-20230426-20-leoksy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nader Shah on the Peacock Throne, whose jewels included the Koh-i-Noor diamond.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is considered one of the world’s largest and most valued diamonds and it usually sits on top of the Crown of Queen Mary.</p>
<p>It has a controversial history — namely that it was “surrendered” to the British by an Indian 10-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, whose mother had been imprisoned and whose father had recently died. It’s likely for that reason, that it won’t be on display at the coronation. But plenty of other jewels will be part of the ceremony. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=47%2C41%2C3934%2C2907&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523154/original/file-20230427-28-yd7cfj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Imperial State Crown on a cushion as it arrives for the State Opening of Parliament.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP)</span></span>
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<p>There is the five-pound gold St. Edward’s Crown that Charles will be officially crowned with, the Sovereign’s Sceptre, which has the Great Star of Africa diamond in it and the Imperial State Crown, which is set with almost 3,000 diamonds - including another Star of Africa.</p>
<p>Joining me to explore the history and meaning behind these jewels is Annie St. John-Stark, assistant professor of British history at Thompson Rivers University. Also here today is: Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, instructor of history at both the University of the Fraser Valley and the University of British Columbia. Her newly minted PhD looks at how museums can grow to include voices previously left off the “official record.” </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523151/original/file-20230427-26-vncuii.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=942&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Queen Elizabeth II on her coronation day.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Although many will be out partying next weekend, the pomp of the coronation - along with its display of the Crown Jewels - does not reflect current day British attitudes. Only <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/04/14/first-coronation-what-then">32 per cent believe the Empire is something to be proud of</a> — that is down almost 25 per cent <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2014/07/26/britain-proud-its-empire">from 2014</a>. That means, attitudes are changing quickly. </p>
<p>Will the Royal Family catch up? </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not just the jewels, it’s the pomp of everything that is attached to the ceremony is such a contradiction now to the things we are talking about globally in our world in terms of privilege, colonialism and class structures. - Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523149/original/file-20230427-308-yyopwc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Union flags are raised to celebrate the upcoming coronation of King Charles, in central London, last week.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Kin Cheung)</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Resources</h2>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/523150/original/file-20230427-18-r895dy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This black and white photograph of Maharajah Duleep Singh, the last Indian owner of the Koh-i-Noor diamond was taken by Prince Albert in 1854 in England.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/kohinoor-9781635570779/"><em>Koh-i-Noor: The History of the World’s Most Infamous Diamond</em> by Anita Anand, William Dalrymple</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/true-story-koh-i-noor-diamondand-why-british-wont-give-it-back-180964660/">The True Story of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond—and Why the British Won’t Give It Back (<em>Smithsonian Magazine</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/25483040">Koh-i-Noor: Empire, Diamonds, and the Performance of British Material Culture by Danielle C. Kinsey</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a43522648/what-crown-will-king-charles-wear/">What Crown will King Charles Wear? (<em>Cosmopolitan</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/06/indian-archive-reveals-extent-of-colonial-loot-in-royal-jewellery-collection">Indian Archive Reveals Extent of Colonial Loot in Royal Jewellery Collection (<em>The Guardian</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.saada.org/tides/article/the-ghadar-party">Ghadar Movement</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/25/fashion/jewelry-ananya-malhotra-india-spirituality.html">Expressing Indian Spirituality in Jeweled Form (<em>New York Times</em>)</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india">How Britain Stole 45 Trillion from India (<em>Al Jazeera</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders">The East India Company: The original corporate raiders (<em>The Guardian</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144666811/germany-nigeria-returns-benin-bronzes-looted#:%7E:text=The%20Benin%20Bronzes%20are%20sculptures,their%20call%20in%20recent%20years.">Germany Returns Benin Bronzes (<em>NPR</em>)</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/316672/the-new-age-of-empire-by-andrews-kehinde/9780141992365"><em>The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World</em> by Kehinde Andrews</a></p>
<h2>Read more in The Conversation</h2>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-21st-century-coronation-repatriating-the-crown-jewels-is-long-overdue-204017">King Charles's 21st century coronation: Repatriating the Crown Jewels is long overdue</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-coronation-how-the-place-of-britain-and-the-crown-has-shifted-in-canadian-schooling-204073">King Charles's coronation: How the place of Britain and the Crown has shifted in Canadian schooling</a>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/colonialism-was-a-disaster-and-the-facts-prove-it-84496">Colonialism was a disaster and the facts prove it</a>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/no-ordinary-diamond-how-the-koh-i-noor-became-an-imperial-possession-200473">No ordinary diamond: how the Koh-i-Noor became an imperial possession</a>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/king-charless-coronation-can-the-british-monarchy-shed-its-imperial-past-202027">King Charles’s coronation: Can the British monarchy shed its imperial past?</a>
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<p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/historical-lawsuit-affirms-indigenous-laws-on-par-with-canadas-109711">Historical lawsuit affirms Indigenous laws on par with Canada's</a>
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<strong>
Read more:
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</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-book-that-changed-me-how-priya-satias-times-monster-landed-like-a-bomb-in-my-historians-brain-176023">The book that changed me: how Priya Satia's Time’s Monster landed like a bomb in my historian's brain</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:DCMR@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204000/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Although King Charles will have a low-key ceremony this coronation, the Crown Jewels will still figure prominently. An exploration of the jewels tells a tale of exploitation, rape and pillage.Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientOllie Nicholas, Assistant Producer/Journalism Student, Don't Call Me ResilientLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2004732023-03-01T12:31:38Z2023-03-01T12:31:38ZNo ordinary diamond: how the Koh-i-Noor became an imperial possession<p>Ahead of King Charles’s coronation on May 6 2023, Buckingham Palace <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/feb/14/camilla-wear-queen-mary-crown-coronation">has announced</a> that Camilla, the Queen consort, will be wearing a modified version of the crown made for Queen Mary, the consort of George V. This is the first time since the 1700s that a queen consort crown is being reused. Even more notably, the Koh-i-Noor diamond <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/camilla-swaps-kohinoor-diamond-another-controversial-stone-coronation-rcna71032">will not be used</a> in the crown. </p>
<p>This most precious item among the crown jewels of the United Kingdom is also the most controversial. A piece of colonial legacy, it has long been the subject of <a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-india-and-the-koh-i-noor-diamond-dont-expect-the-jewel-to-be-prised-out-of-the-crown-45753">reparation demands</a> by the Indian government. </p>
<p>Koh-i-Noor is no ordinary diamond. It has been symbolic of the rise, zenith and fall of mighty empires. Never sold or bought, it has instead been a gemstone of victors in India, Persia, Afghanistan, and, since the mid-19th century, in the UK. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An ancient manuscript painting of a person on a throne surrounded by other people." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512163/original/file-20230224-755-mamx70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=586&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Persian ruler, Nadir Shah.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor#/media/File:Nadir_Shah_on_the_Peacock_Throne_after_his_defeat_of_Muhammad_Shah._ca._1850,_San_Diego_MOA.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>How the British took the diamond</h2>
<p>Quite where in India Koh-i-Noor (Persian for “mountain of light”) originated has been debated. Some have said it was mined in <a href="https://archive.org/details/KohinoorDiamond-ItsHistory/mode/2up">the Kollur Mine in Golconda</a>, close to the Krishna river, in what is now Andhra Pradesh. Others have <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2098&context=ilj">traced</a> it to the lower bed of the Godavari river in the country’s centre. </p>
<p>The diamond is more accurately accounted for and its political relevance made clearer in medieval records of <a href="https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10064836/7/Lally_project_muse_719505.pdf">the Mughal rulers</a> who possessed it for over a century until the Persian invasion of India in 1738-39. From the Persian ruler Nadir Shah, it then passed into the hands of the Afghan Durrani dynasty in 1749 and from them to the Sikhs in 1813. </p>
<p>By the late 18th century, the British East India Company had become a key political player in the Indian subcontinent. Its officials were aware of the glory of Koh-i-Noor because the founding ruler of the north-western Sikh kingdom, Maharaja Ranjit Singh, flaunted it as his realm’s most prized possession.</p>
<p>Following the death of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh kingdom began to collapse. During the second Anglo-Sikh war (1848-1849), British East India Company forces deposed
the 10-year-old king, Maharaja Duleep Singh. They placed him under company-appointed British guardianship, then took over his territories and state properties, seizing all the treasury goods kept in the capital city, Lahore, as well as the Koh-i-Noor and Darya-i-Noor jewels. The British estimated the value of these seized goods – excluding Koh-i-Noor – to be at least 37,15,303 rupees (equivalent to roughly £745 million at current rates).</p>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.sikhmuseum.org.uk/portfolio/the-anglo-sikh-treaties-1806-1846/#jp-carousel-454">treaty of submission</a> which the company made Duleep Singh sign on March 29, 1849: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All the property of the State, of whatever description and wheresoever found, shall be confiscated to the Honorable East India Company, in part payment of the debt due by the State of Lahore to the British Government, and of the expenses of the war. The Gem called the Koh-i-noor, which was taken from Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk by Maharajah Runjeet Sing, shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England. </p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photograph of a man in ceremonial attire." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=750&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512166/original/file-20230224-20-j0lj30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=943&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Maharaja Duleep Singh in ceremonial attire in 1861, after his exile to Britain.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Maharaja_Duleep_Singh_in_his_ceremonial_attire%2C_ca.1861.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A prize of conquest</h2>
<p>In April 1849, Koh-i-Noor was handed over to the British crown by <a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.242598/page/n5/mode/2up">Lord Dalhousie</a>, who from 1848 to 1856, was Governor-General of India, under the command of the British East India Company. </p>
<p>Dalhousie had singled out Koh-i-Noor as a “<a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.242598/page/n33/mode/2up?q=historical">historical memorial of conquest</a>”. But, unconventionally, he reserved it for the British monarch, Queen Victoria, and not for his company “court of directors”, as all other confiscated properties were. </p>
<p>The British East India Company was founded by royal charter in 1600 as a joint stock trading company and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27644239">governed</a> by a company court of directors from London. In 1784, the British government also began to oversee the company’s affairs in India via a board of control. </p>
<p>From the mid-18th century, the company had become <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-company-state-9780195393736?cc=gb&lang=en&">a de facto state</a>. Boasting an army and forts, it acquired territories. And it shared dual sovereignty from the British crown and from the Mughal empire. Both conferred to the company certain rights and laws: the rights to collect taxes, to protect its boundaries, to carry out diplomatic ties, to wage wars. Marking this shift from a trading company to a company state, it became known as <em>company bahadur</em> (which means, “the valiant, honourable company”) across South Asia. </p>
<p>When the company court of directors were not given the gem, they took offence. “The Court, you say,” wrote Dalhousie to his close friend, Sir George Couper, on <a href="https://sanipanhwar.com/Private%20letters%20of%20the%20Marquess%20of%20Dalhousie.pdf">August 16 1849</a>, “are ruffled by my having caused the Maharajah to cede to the Queen the Koh-i-noor.” </p>
<p>The former chairman of the board of control, Lord Ellenborough, meanwhile, was indignant that Dalhousie had not given everything to the monarch. He wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>What business has this [Governor General] to confiscate anything to the Company? It belongs to the Queen, and the army have a right to demand it, and I tell you it is dangerous to refuse it.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A historic painting of a queen in a red dress wearing a crown, a necklace and a large brooch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/512029/original/file-20230223-572-d5p6ws.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Queen Victoria wearing Koh-i-Noor as a brooch, in an 1856 portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor#/media/File:Franz_Xaver_Winterhalter_Queen_Victoria_(cropped).jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Caught in the power tussle between the court of directors and the board of control, Dalhousie <a href="https://sanipanhwar.com/Private%20letters%20of%20the%20Marquess%20of%20Dalhousie.pdf">wrote</a> that he felt like “a bundle of hay between two asses”. “Admitting to the utmost the abstract right of the Queen to all property in a conquered country,” he said, in his written defence against Ellenborough, “such has not been the practice in India”. </p>
<p>Dalhousie defended his bypassing of the court of directors’ authority, saying he had acted as much in their own interests as he had in the Crown’s:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It was more for the honour of the Queen that the Koh-i-Noor should be surrendered directly from the hand of the conquered prince into the hands of the sovereign who was his conqueror, than that it should be presented to her as a gift —- which is always a favour -— by a joint-stock company among her subjects. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>On March 30 1849, he wrote to Couper from Punjab: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>What I have done I have done on my own responsibility. I know it to be just, politic, and necessary. […] It is not every day that an officer of their Government adds four millions of subjects to the British Empire, and places the historical jewel of the Mogul Emperors in the Crown of his own Sovereign. This I have done. Do not think I unduly exult.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dalhousie, as a loyal British subject of Her Majesty, went out of his way to secure Koh-i-Noor for the British crown, as a symbol of imperial glory. For Duleep Singh and the Sikh kingdom, it was a treasure that East India Company officials forced them to surrender upon defeat in 1849.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200473/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arun Kumar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Throughout its known history, Koh-i-Noor has been a symbol of imperial conquest and glory.Arun Kumar, Assistant Professor in Imperial and Colonial History, University of NottinghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1992322023-02-07T13:30:39Z2023-02-07T13:30:39ZW.E.B. Du Bois, Black History Month and the importance of African American studies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508198/original/file-20230205-15-zit4rm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C124%2C4094%2C3225&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Scholar-activist W.E.B. DuBois in 1946.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/william-e-b-dubois-sociologist-scholar-and-cofounder-of-the-news-photo/159788642">Underwood Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The opening days of Black History Month 2023 have coincided with controversy about the teaching and broader meaning of African American studies. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153434464/college-boards-revised-ap-african-american-studies-course-draws-new-criticism">On Feb. 1, 2023</a>, the College Board released a revised curriculum for its newly developed Advanced Placement African American studies course.</p>
<p>Critics have accused the College Board of caving to political pressure stemming from conservative backlash and the decision of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150259944/florida-rejects-ap-class-african-american-studies">ban the course</a> from public high schools in Florida because of what he characterized as its radical content and inclusion of topics such as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-critical-race-theory.html">critical race theory</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/17/879041052/william-darity-jr-discusses-reparations-racial-equality-in-his-new-book">reparations</a> and the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement. </p>
<p>On Feb. 11, 1951, an article by the 82-year-old Black scholar-activist W.E.B. Du Bois titled “<a href="https://credo.library.umass.edu/view/full/mums312-b210-i014">Negro History Week</a>” appeared in the short-lived New York newspaper The Daily Compass. </p>
<p>As one of the founders of the NAACP in 1909 and the editor of its powerful magazine <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/history-crisis">The Crisis</a>, Du Bois is considered by historians and intellectuals from many academic disciplines as America’s <a href="https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/815-turning-high-fashion-into-politics-henry-louis-gates-jr-on-web-du-bois-and-the-new-negro-movement-of-1900">preeminent thinker on race</a>. His thoughts and opinions still carry weight throughout the world. </p>
<p>Du Bois’ words in that 1951 article are especially prescient today, offering a reminder about the importance of Black History Month and what is at stake in current conversations about African American studies. </p>
<p>Du Bois began his Daily Compass commentary by praising <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fugitive_Pedagogy/dnUZEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=carter+g+woodson&printsec=frontcover">Carter G. Woodson</a>, founder of the <a href="https://asalh.org/">Association for the Study of Negro Life and History</a>, who established Negro History Week in 1926. The week would eventually become Black History Month.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An elderly black man dressed in a dark business suit poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508201/original/file-20230205-23-27sr65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black historian Carter G. Woodson in 1946.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2016/02/lcm-trending-african-american-history-month/carterwoodson/">Library of Congress</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Du Bois described the annual commemoration as Woodson’s “crowning achievement.” </p>
<p>Woodson was <a href="https://www.nps.gov/cawo/learn/carter-g-woodson-biography.htm">the second African American</a> to earn a doctorate in history from Harvard University. <a href="https://guides.library.harvard.edu/hua/dubois">Du Bois was the first</a>.</p>
<p>Du Bois and Woodson did not always see eye to eye. However, as <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/facultyguide/person.html?emplid=7f443ffde35747ba69faca210faff07145fab78c">I explore</a> in my new book, “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374293154/the-wounded-world">The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War</a>,” the two pioneering scholars always respected each other.</p>
<h2>Reckoning with history and reclaiming the past</h2>
<p>Du Bois’ connection to and appreciation of Negro History Week grew during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/w-e-b-du-bois-and-black-history-month/">During this time</a>, whether in public speeches or published articles, he never missed an opportunity to acknowledge the importance of Negro History Week. </p>
<p>In the Feb. 11, 1951, article, Du Bois reflected that his own contributions to Negro History Week “lay in my long effort as a historian and sociologist to make America and Negroes themselves aware of the significant facts of Negro history.” </p>
<p>Summarizing his work from his first book, “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Suppression_of_the_African_Slave_tra/04mJJlND1ccC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade</a>,” published in 1896, through his magnum opus “<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Black_Reconstruction_in_America_1860_188/Nt5mglDCNHEC?hl=en">Black Reconstruction in America</a>,” published in 1935, Du Bois told readers of the Daily Compass piece that much of his career was spent trying “to correct the distortion of history in regard to Negro enfranchisement.”</p>
<p>By doing so, the nation would hopefully become, Du Bois wrote further, “conscious that this part of our citizenry were normal human beings who had served the nation credibly and were still being deprived of their credit by ignorant and prejudiced historians.”</p>
<p>In addition to championing Negro History Week, Du Bois applauded other Black scholars, like <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/E-Franklin-Frazier">E. Franklin Frazier</a>, <a href="https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/02/11/black-history-month-charles-s-johnson-scholar-race-relations/23256961/">Charles Johnson</a> and <a href="https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/schlesinger-library/collections/shirley-graham-du-bois">Shirley Graham</a>, who were “steadily attacking” the omissions and distortions of Black people in school textbooks. </p>
<p>Du Bois went on to chronicle the achievements of African Americans in science, religion, art, literature and the military, making clear that Black people had a history to be proud of.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of black men, women and children are marching on a street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/508199/original/file-20230205-504-ix6lu9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">W.E.B. Du Bois, third from right in the second row, joins other marchers in New York protesting against racism on July 28, 1917.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prominent-african-americans-residents-of-the-city-paraded-news-photo/530843082?phrase=web%20du%20bois&adppopup=true">George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Du Bois, however, questioned what deeper meaning these achievements held to the issues facing Black people in the present.</p>
<p>“What now does Negro History Week stand for?” he asked in the 1951 article. “Shall American Negroes continue to learn to be ‘proud’ of themselves, or is there a higher broader aim for their research and study?”</p>
<p>“In other words,” he asserted, “as it becomes more universally known what Negroes contributed to America in the past, more must logically be said and taught concerning the future.”</p>
<p>The time had come, Du Bois believed, for African Americans to stop striving to be merely “the equal of white Americans.”</p>
<p>Black people needed to cease emulating the worst traits of America – flamboyance, individualism, greed and financial success at any cost – and support <a href="https://naacp.org/find-resources/history-explained/civil-rights-leaders/web-du-bois">labor unions</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3041154">Pan-Africanism</a> and <a href="https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois">anti-colonial struggle</a>. </p>
<p>He especially encouraged the systematic study of the imperial and economic roots of racism: “Here is a field for Negro History Week.”</p>
<h2>Black history and Black struggle</h2>
<p>Looking ahead, Du Bois declared that if Negro History Week remained “true to the ideals of Carter Woodson” and followed “the logical development of the Negro Race in America,” it would not confine itself to the study of the past nor “boasting and vainglory over what we have accomplished.” </p>
<p>“It will not mistake wealth as the measure of America, nor big-business and noise as World Domination,” Du Bois wrote in his article.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Under a large headline that reads The Shame of America, a newspaper advertisement lists a number of lynchings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/337712/original/file-20200526-106815-f764c8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1010&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1922, the NAACP ran a series of full-page ads in The New York Times calling attention to lynchings.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6786">New York Times, Nov. 23, 1922/American Social History Project</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, Du Bois believed Negro History Week would “concentrate on study of the present,” “not be afraid of radical literature” and, above all else, advocate for peace and voice “eternal opposition against war between the white and colored peoples of the earth.” </p>
<p>Were he alive today, Du Bois would certainly have much to say about current debates around the teaching of African American history and the larger significance of African American studies. <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/05/specials/dubois-obit.html">Du Bois died</a> on Aug. 27, 1963, in Accra, Ghana. </p>
<p>But he left behind his clairvoyant words that remind us of the connections between African American studies and movements for Black liberation, along with how the teaching of African American history has always challenged racist and exclusionary narratives of the nation’s past. </p>
<p>Du Bois also reminds us that Black History Month is rooted in a legacy of activism and resistance, one that continues in the present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chad Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the 20th century’s preeminent scholar-activist on race, W.E.B. Du Bois would not be surprised by modern-day attempts at whitewashing American history. He saw them in 1930s and 1940s.Chad Williams, Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924692022-11-09T15:06:39Z2022-11-09T15:06:39ZThe unfairness of the climate crisis — Podcast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493637/original/file-20221105-27172-i10fuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=172%2C206%2C5578%2C3483&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Millions have lost their homes in flooding caused by unusually heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan this year that many experts have blamed on climate change. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Join us <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/the-unfairness-of-the-climate-crisis">on this episode of <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em></a> as we speak with researcher and migration expert Yvonne Su about climate-induced migration, the ways in which the climate crisis should factor into refugee claims and the burden of care that is owed to displaced people. </p>
<iframe height="200px" width="100%" frameborder="no" scrolling="no" seamless="" src="https://player.simplecast.com/411550b5-dc14-4ca7-9469-5e35e4393a93?dark=true"></iframe>
<p><iframe id="tc-infographic-572" class="tc-infographic" height="100" src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/infographics/572/661898416fdc21fc4fdef6a5379efd7cac19d9d5/site/index.html" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Recently, there have been some troubling images coming out of Pakistan, where <a href="https://theconversation.com/pakistans-floods-are-a-disaster-but-they-didnt-have-to-be-190027">devastating floods have taken the lives of more than 1,500 people and displaced close to 8 million</a>. The floods have also submerged farmlands and spread waterborne illnesses. In total, it is estimated that the floods have so far impacted over 33 million people. </p>
<p>So the picture is bleak. </p>
<p>And a lot of this suffering can be linked to human-induced climate change. </p>
<p>In other words, the global climate crisis has been driven by the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation by western states. Meanwhile, some populations continue to bear the brunt of the impact. Given this, <a href="https://theconversation.com/loss-and-damage-who-is-responsible-when-climate-change-harms-the-worlds-poorest-countries-and-what-does-compensation-look-like-192070">do the United Nations and those states who have contributed most to the problem have the moral responsibility to protect and compensate those most harmed by climate change?</a></p>
<p>This month, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/cop27-climate-change-summit.html">leaders from over 190 countries gather in Egypt for COP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference</a>. Previous UN climate change summits have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/16/indigenous-climate-activists-cop26-endangers-native-communities">criticized by Indigenous and environmental activists who say the so-called solutions coming out of them have done more harm than good. </a></p>
<p>Will this year be different? Will leaders be paying attention to real solutions for people in Pakistan that are being displaced right now?</p>
<p>Join us as we speak with Yvonne Su, Assistant Professor in the Department of Equity Studies at York University. Yvonne specializes in migration, including climate change-induced displacement <a href="https://theconversation.com/wildfire-and-flood-disasters-are-causing-climate-migration-within-canada-167730">both globally and in Canada</a>. She has a PhD in Political Science and International Development from the University of Guelph and a Masters in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492398/original/file-20221029-38660-skfves.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Residents navigate the Solimoes River with difficulty due to the current severe drought, in Tefe, Amazonas state, Brazil, Oct. 20, 2022. Months after enduring floods that destroyed crops, thousands of families in the Brazilian Amazon are now dealing with severe drought. (AP Photo/Edmar Barros)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Listen and Follow</h2>
<p>You can listen to or follow <em>Don’t Call Me Resilient</em> on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/dont-call-me-resilient/id1549798876">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9qZFg0Ql9DOA">Google Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/37tK4zmjWvq2Sh6jLIpzp7">Spotify</a> or <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com">wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts</a>. <a href="mailto:theculturedesk@theconversation.com">We’d love to hear from you</a>, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConversationCA">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheConversationCanada">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@theconversation">TikTok</a> and use #DontCallMeResilient.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mCusEDZ62fY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">the Season 4 Trailer for Don’t Call Me Resilient.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Also in The Conversation</h2>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pakistan-floods-will-rich-nations-ever-pay-for-climate-loss-and-damage-190127">Pakistan floods: will rich nations ever pay for climate loss and damage?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/loss-and-damage-who-is-responsible-when-climate-change-harms-the-worlds-poorest-countries-192070">Loss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world's poorest countries?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cop27-which-countries-will-push-to-end-fossil-fuel-production-and-which-wont-193471">COP27: Which countries will push to end fossil fuel production? And which won't?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wildfire-and-flood-disasters-are-causing-climate-migration-within-canada-167730">Wildfire and flood disasters are causing 'climate migration' within Canada</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/un-ruling-could-be-a-game-changer-for-climate-refugees-and-climate-action-130532">UN ruling could be a game-changer for climate refugees and climate action</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-canadian-senator-aims-to-end-the-widespread-financial-backing-of-fossil-fuels-192827">A Canadian senator aims to end the widespread financial backing of fossil fuels</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Sources</h2>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102638">The unbearable heaviness of climate coloniality by Farhana Sultana</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.academia.edu/26646243/Should_We_Bring_Back_Climate_Refugees_">Should we bring back climate refugees? By Yvonne Su</a></p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.411">Climate change communication and Indigenous publics</a> by
Candis Callison</p>
<h2>Transcript</h2>
<p>For an unedited transcript of this episode, go <a href="https://dont-call-me-resilient.simplecast.com/episodes/the-unfairness-of-the-climate-crisis">here</a>. </p>
<p><em>Don’t Call Me Resilient was produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab at UBC and with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Does the Global North have a moral responsibility to protect and compensate those in the Global South that disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change devastation?Vinita Srivastava, Host + Producer, Don't Call Me ResilientOllie Nicholas, Assistant Producer/Journalism Student, Don't Call Me ResilientDannielle Piper, Associate Producer, Don't Call Me Resilient, The ConversationLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1920702022-11-02T12:28:58Z2022-11-02T12:28:58ZLoss and damage: Who is responsible when climate change harms the world’s poorest countries?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492622/original/file-20221031-13-eywc63.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C17%2C3976%2C2646&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Extreme flooding in Pakistan in 2022 affected 33 million people.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/residents-use-a-raft-to-move-along-a-waterlogged-street-in-news-photo/1242590163"> Akram Shahid/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>You may be hearing the phrase “loss and damage” in the coming weeks as government leaders meet in Egypt for the 2022 U.N. Climate Change Conference.</p>
<p>It refers to the costs, both economic and physical, that developing countries are facing from climate change impacts. Many of the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries have done little to cause climate change, yet they are experiencing extreme heat waves, floods and other climate-related disasters. They want wealthier nations – <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions">historically the biggest sources</a> of greenhouse gas emissions – to pay for the harm. </p>
<p>A powerful example is Pakistan, where <a href="https://theconversation.com/2022s-supercharged-summer-of-climate-extremes-how-global-warming-and-la-nina-fueled-disasters-on-top-of-disasters-190546">extreme rainfall</a> on the heels of a <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02813-6">glacier-melting heat wave</a> flooded nearly one-third of the country in the summer of 2022.</p>
<p>The flooding turned Pakistan’s farm fields into miles-wide lakes that stranded communities for weeks. <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-monsoon-floods-2022-islamic-relief-pakistan-12-october-2022">More than 1,700 people died</a>, millions lost their homes and livelihoods, and more than 4 million acres of crops and orchards, as well as livestock, drowned or were damaged. This was followed by a <a href="https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2022-DON413">surge in malaria</a> cases as mosquitoes bred in the stagnant water.</p>
<p>Pakistan contributes only about 1% of the global greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change. But greenhouse gases don’t stay within national borders – emissions anywhere affect the global climate. A warming climate intensifies rainfall, and studies suggest climate change may have <a href="https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/climate-change-likely-increased-extreme-monsoon-rainfall-flooding-highly-vulnerable-communities-in-pakistan/">increased Pakistan’s rainfall intensity by as much as 50%</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man sits on a bench outside the door too his home, surrounded by floodwater up to his shins." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/492878/original/file-20221101-26784-xmat9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Many of the millions of people affected by the 2022 flooding in Pakistan already lived in poverty.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/abdul-rahim-is-photographed-outside-his-flooded-house-on-news-photo/587483798">Gideon Mendel For Action Aid/ In Pictures/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The question of payments for loss and damage has been a <a href="https://climateanalytics.org/briefings/loss-and-damage/">long-standing point of negotiation</a> at United Nations climate conferences, held nearly every year <a href="https://unfccc.int/process/the-convention/history-of-the-convention#Climate-Change-in-context">since 1995</a>, but there has been little progress toward including a financial mechanism for loss and damage in international climate agreements.</p>
<p>Many <a href="https://unclimatesummit.org/time-to-respond/">developing countries</a> are looking to this year’s conference, COP27, as a crucial moment for making progress on <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/cop27-why-is-addressing-loss-and-damage-crucial-for-climate-justice/">establishing that formal mechanism</a>.</p>
<h2>Africa’s climate conference</h2>
<p>With Egypt hosting this year’s U.N. climate conference, it’s not surprising that loss and damage will take center stage.</p>
<p>Countries in Africa have some of the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2">lowest national greenhouse gas emissions</a>, and yet the continent is home to many of the world’s most <a href="https://gain.nd.edu/our-work/country-index/">climate-vulnerable countries</a>.</p>
<p><iframe id="vcea5" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vcea5/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>To deal with climate change, these countries – many of them <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gross-domestic-product">among the world’s poorest</a> – will have to invest in adaptation measures, such as seawalls, <a href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climate-smart-agriculture">climate-smart agriculture</a> and infrastructure that’s more resilient to high heat and extreme storms. The UN Environment Program’s Adaptation Gap Report, released Nov. 3, 2022, found that developing countries need <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/adaptation-gap-report-2022">five to 10 times more</a> international adaptation finance than wealthier countries are providing.</p>
<p>When climate disasters strike, countries also need more financial help to cover relief efforts, infrastructure repairs and recovery. This is loss and damage.</p>
<p>Egypt is emphasizing the need for wealthy countries to <a href="https://cop27.eg/#/">make more progress on providing financial support for both</a> adaptation and loss and damage. </p>
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<h2>Climate injustice and loss and damage</h2>
<p>The conversation on loss and damage is inherently about equity. It evokes the question: Why should countries that have done little to cause global warming be responsible for the damage resulting from the emissions of wealthy countries?</p>
<p>That also makes it contentious. Negotiators know that the idea of payments for loss and damage has the potential to lead to further discussions about financial compensation for historical injustices, such as slavery in the United States or colonial exploitation by European powers.</p>
<p>At COP26, held in 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators made progress on some key issues, such as <a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/cop26-climate-pledges-tracking-progress">stronger emissions targets and pledges to double adaptation finance</a> for developing countries. But COP26 was seen as a disappointment by advocates trying to establish a financial mechanism for wealthier nations to provide finance for loss and damage in developing countries.</p>
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<h2>What a formal mechanism might look like</h2>
<p>The lack of resolution at COP26, combined with Egypt’s commitment to focus on financing for adaptation and loss and damage, means the issue will be on the table this year.</p>
<p>The nonprofit <a href="https://www.c2es.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Loss-and-Damage-Issues-and-Options-for-cop27.pdf">Center for Climate and Energy Solutions</a> expects discussions to focus on institutional arrangements for the <a href="https://www.iied.org/interview-how-can-santiago-network-for-loss-damage-meet-technical-needs-communities-vulnerable">Santiago Network for Loss and Damage</a>, which focuses on providing technical assistance to help developing countries minimize loss and damage; and on fine-tuning the <a href="https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Glasgow_Dialogue.pdf">Glasgow Dialogue</a>, a formal process developed in 2021 to bring countries together to discuss funding for loss and damage.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.v-20.org/">V20 group</a> of finance ministers, representing 58 countries highly vulnerable to climate change, and <a href="https://www.g7germany.de/g7-en/g7-summit/g7-members">the G-7</a> group of wealthy nations also <a href="https://www.v-20.org/our-voice/news/press-releases/v20-and-g7-agree-on-financial-protection-cooperation-to-formally-launch-global-shield-against-climate-risks-at-cop27">reached an agreement</a> in October 2022 on a financial mechanism called the <a href="https://www.bmz.de/en/issues/climate-change-and-development/global-shield-against-climate-risks">Global Shield Against Climate Risks</a>. The Global Shield is focused on providing risk insurance and rapid financial assistance to countries after disasters, but it’s unclear how it will fit into the international discussions. Some groups <a href="https://www.climatechangenews.com/2022/07/18/germany-promotes-insurance-based-global-shield-for-climate-victims/">have raised concerns</a> that relying on insurance systems can overlook the poorest people and distract from the larger discussion of establishing a dedicated fund for loss and damage. </p>
<p>Two elements of developed countries’ reluctance to formalize a loss and damage mechanism involve how to determine which countries or communities are eligible for compensation and what the <a href="https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/211025c-davis-shawoo-loss-and-damage-finance-pr-2110l.pdf">limitations</a> of such a mechanism would be.</p>
<p>What would a threshold for loss and damage eligibility look like? Limiting countries or communities from receiving compensation for loss and damage based on their current emissions or gross domestic product could become a problematic and complicated process. Most experts recommend <a href="https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/211025c-davis-shawoo-loss-and-damage-finance-pr-2110l.pdf">determining eligibility based on climate vulnerability</a>, but this can also prove difficult.</p>
<h2>How will world leaders respond?</h2>
<p>Over a decade ago, developed countries committed to provide <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3">US$100 billion per year</a> to fund adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. But they have been <a href="https://www.unep.org/resources/adaptation-gap-report-2022">slow to meet</a> that commitment, and it does not cover the damages from the climate impacts the world is already seeing today. </p>
<p>Establishing a loss and damage mechanism is considered one avenue to provide recourse for global climate injustice. All eyes will be on Egypt Nov. 6-18, 2022, to see how world leaders respond.</p>
<p><em>This article was updated Nov. 3, 2022, with the UNEP Adaptation Gap Report findings.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192070/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bethany Tietjen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>That’s the big question at the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP27, and it’s controversial.Bethany Tietjen, Research fellow in climate policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1878232022-08-04T16:04:58Z2022-08-04T16:04:58ZReparations to Indigenous Peoples are critical after Pope’s apology for residential schools<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476773/original/file-20220730-18-gla12u.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C717%2C6130%2C3589&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A protestor holds a sign saying 'Reparation for Reconciliation' as Pope Francis arrives for a public event in Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 29, 2022, during his papal visit across Canada. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people are contemplating Pope Francis’s recent apology for residential schools in Canada during his visit <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/read-the-full-text-of-pope-francis-speech-and-apology-1.6001384">to Alberta</a>, as well as his statements <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-pope-francis-renews-his-apology-in-quebec/">from Québec City</a> <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/pope-francis-iqaluit-nunavut-visit-1.6535224">and Iqaluit</a>. In the aftermath of historical atrocities, apologies can offer a sense of justice and acknowledgement for people who were the targets of institutional violence. </p>
<p>People are looking for two things: </p>
<ol>
<li>Authenticity — Are the Pope’s statements a genuine reflection of the church’s “penance” and commitments to change?</li>
<li>Responsibility — Do the Pope’s statements demonstrate willingness and resolve for the church to address systemic causes and effects of specific harms?</li>
</ol>
<p>Many are waiting to see <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/pope-francis-residential-schools-genocide-1.6537203">if the Roman Catholic Church</a> will take institutional responsibility <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2015.1096580">for genocide</a>, sexualized abuse, <a href="https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/st-anne-residential-school-opp-documents">torture</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/world/canada/mass-graves-residential-schools.html#">and the deaths of thousands of Indigenous children</a>. </p>
<p>A more fulsome apology would acknowledge the church’s wrongdoing, and complicity with the Canadian settler-colonial state, to <a href="https://www.insightexchange.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Language-and-Violence-Resource-Kit.pdf">suppress Indigenous resistance</a> in order to access land. The links between extracting resources and taking children from Indigenous communities, and attacks on communities throughout this process, have been obscured — and reparations have a role addressing this. </p>
<h2>Violence prevention</h2>
<p>As a Métis scholar, with Cree and Gwichin ancestry, I have been committed to improving the conditions and well-being of Indigenous people in Canada.</p>
<p>I was recently lead researcher on a project at Concordia University called “<a href="https://www.concordia.ca/cuevents/artsci/2021/10/22/indigenous-healing-knowledges.html">Indigenous Healing Knowledges</a>.” One insight shared by many survivors at a related conference where Elders, Knowledge keepers and Indigenous youth offered teachings about their experiences and approaches to healing, is that people are more likely to recover — and promptly — when
<a href="https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs101201918804">the violence against them has been acknowledged</a> and not minimized.</p>
<p>Recovery is more likely when they have been made safe, received care and have been treated with dignity. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Elders seen in a crowd listening." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477246/original/file-20220802-14394-9jeb3g.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Indigenous Elders listen as Pope Francis gives an apology during a public event in Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 29, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Accurate language use, in reference to violence, serves as a positive and just social response, which is important for restoring well-being. <a href="https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1450124405592/1529106060525">Reconciliation</a> must be preceded by truth-telling. The absence of historic truth leads to uncomfortable distortions for targeted groups. </p>
<h2>Ineffective apologies</h2>
<p>Apology analyst Andy Molinsky, a professor of international management and organizational behaviour at Brandeis University in the United States, describes <a href="https://hbr.org/2016/11/the-4-types-of-ineffective-apologies">four types of ineffective apologies</a>. </p>
<p>Two apology-types described by Molinsky are visible in the Pope’s statements: the “excessive apology” (or “I’m so sorry, I feel so bad”) that draws attention to one’s own feelings rather than what was done. The “incomplete apology” takes the tone of “I’m sorry that this happened, I’m sorry that you feel this way” and uses passive language. </p>
<p>For example, in drawing attention to his own feelings of sorrow, Pope Francis neglected to acknowledge the rampant sexualized violence that destroyed many lives in residential schools. In his July 28 remarks, he references the “evil” of sexual abuse, but did not <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9023430/pope-denounces-evil-sexual-abuse">say specifically that sexual abuse happened in the residential schools</a>. </p>
<p>He said the church in Canada is on a new path after being devastated by “the evil perpetrated by some of its sons and daughters.”</p>
<h2>Pathologizing of survivors</h2>
<p>I would add a fifth aspect to Molinsky’s list of ineffective apologies: the pathologizing of victims/survivors. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/pope-franciss-visit-to-canada-was-full-of-tensions-both-from-what-was-said-and-what-wasnt-186886">Pope Francis's visit to Canada was full of tensions — both from what was said and what wasn’t</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in white clerical robes and a skullcap is seen seated and speaking." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477247/original/file-20220802-12076-fgij7y.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pope Francis speaks during a public event in Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 29, 2022, during his papal visit across Canada.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Shifting the topic away from violence to the trauma of others conceals violence, disappears perpetrators and <a href="https://doi.org/10.18357/ijcyfs101201918804">may result in blaming victims</a>. This shift conceals the preceding acts of deliberation, planning and entrapment. Focusing on the mind of the victim is a strategy used by perpetrators, and their associates, to discredit victims and their claims.</p>
<h2>Taking children, lands</h2>
<p>Linda Coates and Allan Wade, two researchers <a href="https://www.responsebasedpractice.com/members">based in British Columbia</a> who examine violence and language, documented <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-00724-002">how representations of perpetrator violence in various media involve four linguistic operations</a>: they conceal violence, obscure perpetrator responsibility, conceal victim resistance and blame and pathologize victims. </p>
<p>The problem of violence is inextricably linked to the problem of representation. As such, <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/this-school-is-a-jail-house-documents-reveal-the-horrors-of-indian-residential-schools">child prison camps are presented as “residential schools;”</a> violence as “trauma;” resistance as “resilience;” and “reconciliation” replaces “reparations.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/listen-to-dont-call-me-resilient-our-podcast-about-race-149692">Listen to 'Don't Call Me Resilient': Our podcast about race</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Finally, there is a difference between an apology and forgiveness. Apologies can be coercive if they merely transfer responsibility for “reconciliation” or “getting over it” to the victims/survivors. </p>
<h2>Repairing harms</h2>
<p>In order for history to be aligned with the realities of state abuse, <a href="https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/canada-s-bishops-want-catholic-church-to-issue-new-statement-on-doctrine-of-discovery-1.6004557">a plan of action must follow</a> an apology. </p>
<p>In terms of reparations, the Pope’s recent apologies were accompanied by Indigenous calls for action, including <a href="https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2022/07/26/Post-Apology-To-Do-List/">by Cindy Blackstock</a>, <a href="https://www.therecord.com/ts/news/canada/2022/07/26/pope-franciss-apology-fails-to-meet-truth-and-reconciliation-call-to-action-sinclair.html">Murray Sinclair</a>, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/07/26/pope-francis-we-dont-accept-your-hollow-apology-heres-why.html?fbclid=IwAR0A8i3lDk35ceh4lPc2MWXdQy7xX29wo4hofuqD9Q2jvirtVJzxqeFCLis">Pamela Palmater</a> and other Indigenous leaders. </p>
<p>Despite the obscuring language in the Pope’s apologies, his visit could mark a new way forward — if the Catholic Church supports and initiates actions laid out in the Truth and Reconciliation’s 94 calls to action. Both the church and our legal, educational and governance structures across Canada have much farther to go. </p>
<p>At a recent conference <a href="https://ialmh.org/general-information">on Law and Mental Health</a>, in Lyon, France, legal panelists indicated that a fuller implementation of UNDRIP would address many of Indigenous Peoples’ oustanding concerns. Much of Canada’s wealth has come from what was taken from Indigenous people.</p>
<p>Correcting this wrong will assist Indigenous nations in their self-governance process. </p>
<p>Another important role of the Roman Catholic church is to return some of the land stolen from Indigenous Peoples. The church must also look to its own formidable existing assets to swiftly <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/8997434/canada-bishops-fundraiser-residential-schools">honour the compensation package Catholic entities agreed to pay under the 2006 settlement</a>. Church leaders now say they need five years to raise the current target of $30 million.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men in black clerical robes are seen walking past a seated man in a white clerical robe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477245/original/file-20220802-15-5h8giu.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cardinals walk by Pope Francis during the final public event of his papal visit across Canada as he prepares to leave Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 29, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A different country</h2>
<p>In Canada, Indigenous communities continue to face encroachment by the settler society, particularly by extractive industries as land defenders are arrested. Children are still <a href="https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2087&context=all_fac">removed from their homes</a> when supports could be offered instead.</p>
<p>Church leaders cannot look the other way and pretend the church has no relationship to these legacies of harm.</p>
<p>The church’s values are said to include <a href="https://www.caritas.org.nz/catholic-social-teaching/human-dignity#">respect for and promotion of human dignity</a>, spiritual devotion to <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2016/04/08/top-10-takeaways-amoris-laetitia">the family and community</a>, charity and <a href="https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/ignatian-spirituality/introduction-to-ignatian-spirituality/social-justice-catholic-social-teaching/">social justice</a>. </p>
<p>If extended to Indigenous Peoples and nations, Canada would be a very different country.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187823/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Richardson is affiliated with The Centre for Response-Based Practice trying to address violence. I am the Quebec Indigenous critic for the Green Party and a member of the Green party but I don't mention that here. I have received SSHRC research grants, including for the Indigenous Healing Practices grant. In some of the writings for this grant, I explain context but it is not directly related to the Pope's visit.</span></em></p>The Pope’s apology could mark a new way forward if the Catholic Church makes genuine reparations for the evils it perpetrated.Catherine Richardson, Director, First Peoples Studies Program, Associate Professor, School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1862412022-07-05T13:37:36Z2022-07-05T13:37:36ZPatrice Lumumba’s tooth represents plunder, resilience and reparation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472450/original/file-20220705-18-op8w4i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A march following the return of Patrice Lumumba's tooth from Belgium – all that is left of the anti-colonialist icon murdered in 1961. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Patrice-Lumumba">Patrice Lumumba</a> is the hero of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s truncated bid for complete <a href="https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/congolese-win-independence-belgian-empire-1959-60">independence</a>. He was assassinated by local counter-revolutionary forces with the help of the CIA and Belgian authorities in 1961. Since then, all over the developing world, Lumumba’s name has come to stand for defiance against colonialism and imperialism.</p>
<p>The manner of his <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/how-did-patrice-lumumba-die">death</a> was particularly distressing. He was humiliated and tortured before he was murdered. His body was then doused with acid to facilitate decomposition. A Belgian official reportedly kept his <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-61993601">teeth</a> as mementos as if to add another grisly and macabre dimension to the entire sordid affair.</p>
<p>The return of Lumumba’s tooth after 61 years leaves many questions unanswered and threatens to open a can of worms. This inordinately belated gesture came without a formal apology for the damage caused by Belgian colonialism or a pledge of wide-ranging reparations.</p>
<h2>The ghost of Lumumba</h2>
<p>Ever since his death, it seems the ghost of Lumumba has plagued his aggrieved country, first with the tortuous and bizarre reign of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a> and then with <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-mobutu-to-kabila-the-drc-is-paying-a-heavy-price-for-autocrats-at-its-helm-79455">Laurent Kabila</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of a young man in glasses, suit and tie, wearing a moustache and goatee, his hair in a side path." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=793&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472468/original/file-20220705-20-euq9gz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Patrice Lumumba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it was under Belgian colonial rule that the plunder of the Congo began in earnest. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leopold-II-king-of-Belgium">King Leopold II</a>, bloated with colonial self-righteousness, instituted a reign of devastation that left an estimated 10 million people dead. Rubber plantations were transformed into a hell in which the enslaved who didn’t meet their production quotas had their limbs chopped off. Since then, the DRC has been gripped by a delirium of dense, impenetrable, equatorial traumas.</p>
<p>Indigenes of the DRC have always been used as disposable pawns in their externally foisted tragedies. And these tragedies have descended on them as thickly as their famed tropical forests.</p>
<p>What are we to make of the ordeal of <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/benga-ota-1883-1916/">Ota Benga</a>, for example, the Congolese teenager who, on account of his unusual teeth, was captured and relentlessly exhibited in the anthropological zoos of America? Treated like a performing monkey, he experienced the most heartless form of visual cannibalism, physical humiliation and psychological torture. Would his teeth be returned to the DRC as well?</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young African man poses with a chimpanzee, holding on to a stick and wearing a traditional skirt" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1158&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472480/original/file-20220705-22-sh11vt.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ota Benga at Bronx Zoo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Indeed, the handing over of Lumumba’s tooth represents a gesture of reparation; the return of pilfered colonial goods to the rightful owners. But what about the tooth’s attendant torture? This much delayed political gesture broaches difficult issues surrounding the African quest for genuine reparations from erstwhile colonial overlords.</p>
<h2>The world’s richest country</h2>
<p>The current <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-mobutu-to-kabila-the-drc-is-paying-a-heavy-price-for-autocrats-at-its-helm-79455">plight</a> of the DRC – all but a failed state – makes us weep over its enduring state of abjection. A huge country blessed with innumerable natural resources, with some of the rarest and most important minerals of earth, it remains crippled by conflict and plunder of its vast natural resources.</p>
<p>It is certain that if Lumumba had been allowed to pursue his <a href="https://roape.net/2021/01/17/patrice-lumumba-revolution-freedom-and-the-congo-today/">bold project</a> of emancipation and development, the DRC story would have been vastly different.</p>
<p>It is almost impossible to understand why the potentially richest country in the world remains one of the poorest. </p>
<p>And yet the wealth of the DRC continues to shine through the accomplishments of its talented people. Out of depleted and crumbling infrastructure, governmental emasculation and chronic internecine strife, miraculously, creative excellence continues to emerge.</p>
<p>How can one ever forget the timeless music of guitarist <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/franco-luambo-makiadi-mn0001615589">Franco Luamabo</a>, vocalists <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tabu-ley-rochereau-mn0000015762/biography">Tabu Ley</a> and <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mbilia-bel-mn0000337593/biography">M’bilia Bel</a>, singer-songwriter <a href="https://www.okayafrica.com/fally-ipupa-tokooos-interview/">Fally Ipupa</a> and so many other Congolese musical geniuses?</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a yellow top in profile." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=885&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/472495/original/file-20220705-14-7sobc3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">M'bilia Bel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Or the accomplishments of phenomenal scholars such as Congolese philosopher <a href="https://scholars.duke.edu/person/vmudimbe">V.Y. Mudimbe</a>, whose work singularly redefined the manner in which the west came to understand Africa? Mudimbe reconfigures your mind every time you encounter him. Yet the inhospitability of the DRC keeps him secluded in the US. The rest of the world continues to benefit from Congolese talents and minerals while the country itself regresses.</p>
<p>The eclectic and boisterous urban culture that produced the Congolese rumba and soukous out of the potholed streets of Kinshasa also birthed visual artists such as <a href="https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23091/lot/22/?category=list">Monsengwo Kejwamfi “Moke”</a>, <a href="https://www.contemporary-african-art.com/cheri-cherin.html">Cheri Cherin</a>, <a href="http://www.cherisamba.net">Chéri Samba</a>, <a href="https://www.thedreamafrica.com/5-congolese-artists-you-need-to-know-patrick-mutombo/">Patrick Mutombo, Marthe Ngandu</a> and many others. </p>
<p>Collectively, their works capture and reflect the life and energy to be found in the DRC’s frenetic and teeming postcolonial metropolises. But there is a snag. These largely self-taught artists were cut off from their precolonial artistic heritage due to the violence of the colonial encounter.</p>
<h2>The tooth</h2>
<p>As in many other parts of Africa, over 2,000 works of art stolen from what is now the DRC remain in the museums of Europe. These works are not merely aesthetic and symbolic. They are also central to the continuation of integrated cultural evolution. In addition, they encompass swathes of history and tradition spanning millennia. The return of those stolen pieces of cultural heritage and an awareness of what they truly represent would be a starting point for meaningful reparations for the past.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-patrice-lumumbas-assassination-drove-student-activism-shaping-the-congos-future-185170">How Patrice Lumumba's assassination drove student activism, shaping the Congo's future</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Ultimately, beyond its cosmetic or even symbolic value, the gesture of returning Lumumba’s violated tooth ought to lead to a considerable degree of healing the DRC so desperately needs, in organic, broadly and deeply conceived ways. This means acts of reparations must not only be loaded in meaning but must also be essentially transformative in nature. In other words, they must include socioeconomic and cultural deliverables.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>All that remains of the political icon is a tooth, but it represents much more than just a human trophy.Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1849032022-06-12T09:05:07Z2022-06-12T09:05:07ZRetracing Belgium’s dark past in the Congo, and attempts to forge deeper ties<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468293/original/file-20220610-17-cj0qik.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and Belgian King Philippe toast at an official banquet in Kinshasa.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicolas Maeterlinck/Belga/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe id="noa-web-audio-player" style="border: none" src="https://embed-player.newsoveraudio.com/v4?key=x84olp&id=https://theconversation.com/retracing-belgiums-dark-past-in-the-congo-and-attempts-to-forge-deeper-ties-184903&bgColor=F5F5F5&color=D8352A&playColor=D8352A" width="100%" height="110px"></iframe>
<p><em>Belgian King Philippe and his wife Queen Mathilde recently led a delegation on a <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/234324/belgian-king-and-queen-leave-for-state-visit-to-congo-tomorrow">week-long visit</a> to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The trip was billed as a chance to recalibrate the relationship between the two countries after a dark colonial past. We spoke to Julien Bobineau, who has researched the narratives around Belgium’s history with the Congo, about the visit. And if it could lead to a <a href="https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/07/dr-congo-belgian-king-arrives-in-kinshasa-for-first-official-visit//#:%7E:text=Belgium's%20colonisation%20of%20the%20Congo,the%20king%2C%20echoed%20the%20sentiment.">new partnership</a> between the two countries.</em></p>
<h2>What is Belgium’s history in the DRC?</h2>
<p>There’s a dark history between Belgium and the DRC that started in the 19th century.</p>
<p>Between 1884 and 1885, there were a series of negotiations between European powers to formalise claims to territory in Africa. It culminated in the <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780822385035-003/pdf">Berlin Conference</a>. African stakeholders were not involved in the negotiations. </p>
<p>During the conference, Belgian King Leopold II obtained international legitimacy for the ownership of the lands in what is now the Congo. </p>
<p>From then on, he was the private ruler of the État Indépendant du Congo (Congo Free State), which was 80 times the size of his Kingdom of Belgium. Until his death in 1909, Leopold II never set foot in “his” colony.</p>
<p>But he profited enormously from the Congo’s raw materials. </p>
<p>It is <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/King-Leopolds-Ghost-Heroism-Colonial/dp/1447211359">estimated</a> that about half of the then 20 million inhabitants of the Congo lost their lives due to the conditions people had to endure to extract raw materials, mainly of rubber. Some historians <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23133898">refer to this</a> as a genocide. </p>
<p>After international protests, Leopold II sold the private colony to the Belgian state in 1908. After the takeover, the country was renamed Congo Belge, but the interests remained the same. In southeast Congo, the Belgians discovered large ore deposits and exported copper, tropical wood, cotton, cocoa and coffee to Europe. </p>
<p>After slavery was officially abolished in 1910, Congolese workers received a wage for their work in the mines and on the plantations. However, this was much less than the payment Europeans received for the same work. </p>
<p>This colonial racism continued in everyday life until the middle of the 20th century. Cities were divided into “white” and “black” neighbourhoods. The Congolese were only allowed to visit the restaurants, bars and cinemas of “white” Europeans with special permission.</p>
<p>From the 1950s, a broad movement <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110709308/html?lang=de">formed</a> in Congo Belge to protest against Belgian foreign rule. Belgian King Baudouin I finally relented and “released” the DR Congo into independence on 30 June 1960. Joseph Kasavubu was elected the first president, with Patrice Lumumba as prime minister. </p>
<p>However, shortly after independence, there was a falling out between the independent government and Western powers, primarily the US and Belgium. They wanted to retain control over the raw materials in the Congo. </p>
<p>After only two months in power, Lumumba was deposed in September 1960. He <a href="https://www.cadtm.org/In-memory-of-Patrice-Lumumba-assassinated-on-17-January-1961">was assassinated</a> by his political opponents in Katanga in January 1961 with the help of Belgian and US secret services. </p>
<p>Belgium’s involvement in the political assassination was concealed until a commission of enquiry, <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/50661/facing-the-truths-of-belgium-s-colonial-past-the-unresolved-case-of-patrice-lumumba-s-death">launched</a> by the Belgian parliament in 1999, found Belgium partially responsible for Lumumba’s death.</p>
<h2>What’s happened to relations since independence?</h2>
<p>There have been three major shifts.</p>
<p>The first is when Joseph-Désiré Mobutu came to power in 1965. An army commander, he <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/mobutu-joseph-desire-mobutu-sese-seko-kuku-waza-banga-1930-1997/">seized power</a> and established an autocratic dictatorship that lasted until 1997. </p>
<p>Belgian-Congolese diplomatic relations were characterised by ups and downs during Mobutu’s reign. On the one hand, Belgium wanted to maintain ties with the former colony for geopolitical and economic reasons. On the other, the Belgian government had to <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-04-29-9704290128-story.html">respond diplomatically</a> to the countless human rights abuses committed by Mobutu’s regime. </p>
<p>This dilemma was exacerbated by two aspects. Firstly, Mobutu repeatedly pointed out Belgium’s moral responsibility to the country resulting from colonial rule, especially in crisis situations. Secondly, there was <a href="https://sciendo.com/article/10.1515/werk-2017-0007">colonial nostalgia</a> among the Belgian population. The colonial rule was romantically glorified in Belgium. </p>
<p>The second shift happened much later. In 2020, the <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/en">AfricanMuseum</a> changed its guidelines in dealing with objects from colonial contexts. The <a href="https://www.africamuseum.be/de/about_us/restitution">goal</a> was to make negotiations on restitution possible.</p>
<p>The museum, in the Brussels suburb of Tervuren, was founded in 1897 by Leopold II at the height of colonialism. It served many Belgians as their first point of contact with the African colony. Racist images and colonial bias were <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/39892/pdf">constructed</a> to justify foreign rule in the Congo. </p>
<p>Hundreds of thousands of ethnographic objects – mainly looted objects, but also “donations” – were brought to Tervuren and are still stored in the museum today. </p>
<p>Following this general paradigm shift, in October 2020, the Free University of Brussels agreed to return human remains from Congo to the University of Lubumbashi. And in March 2022, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/belgium-takes-first-small-step-in-returning-art-to-congo/">announced the return</a> of 84,000 Congolese artefacts. </p>
<p>The third shift is King Philippe’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/30/belgian-king-philippe-expresses-profound-regrets-for-brutal-colonial-rule">letter</a> to President Felix Tshisekedi on 30 June 2020, the anniversary of Congolese independence. In the letter, the king expressed his deep regret for the colonial injustices committed in the Congo. This was against the backdrop of the global <a href="https://www.rosalux.eu/en/article/1796.black-lives-matter-in-belgium-june-july-2020.html">Black Lives Matter</a> movement in which protests against racism and the neglect of colonial history grew within the Belgian population. </p>
<p>It was the first time that a member of the royal family had addressed the Congolese people with such words. On the same day, then Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès also expressed her regret regarding Belgium’s colonial past. It was the first time a Belgian head of state had done this in that way – a paradigmatic turning point in the country’s historical policy.</p>
<h2>What is Belgium’s proposed reparations plan?</h2>
<p>In October 2021, the Belgian parliament <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/117289/parliament-approves-commission-on-belgiums-colonial-past">set up a commission</a> to deal with colonial injustice. Ten experts were tasked with discussing several issues, including possible financial reparations and a stronger anchoring of Belgian colonial history in education curricula and society. </p>
<p>The commission is also to provide the basis for a reorientation of international relations with former colonial territories. </p>
<p>When it comes to the restitution of objects from colonial contexts, the Belgian government has allocated 2 million euros (about US$2.1 million) to research the provenance of the objects. </p>
<p>For many Congolese in the diaspora in Belgium and in the Congo, this doesn’t go far enough. They also <a href="https://information.tv5monde.com/video/philippe-de-belgique-en-rdc-la-population-congolaise-attend-plus-que-des-regrets">demand</a> an official apology for the colonial atrocities. The government and the king have so far only formulated a “regret”.</p>
<h2>What are the possibilities of improved diplomatic ties?</h2>
<p>For relations to truly improve, the Belgian state must acknowledge its historical responsibility more strongly. It must negotiate politically on an equal footing with its former colonies. </p>
<p>Reparations are also an important issue. Even if many Belgians believe that they cannot be held responsible for the crimes of their ancestors, the Belgian economy profited greatly from colonial exploitation – and in principle continues to do so today. </p>
<p>Congolese societies, in contrast, were deprived of the potential to ‘develop’ due to exploitation, slavery and genocide. The different current economic situations prove this historically generated discrepancy for which there must be a compensation.</p>
<p>The broad debate alone can only be conducted in Belgian society alongside Congolese actors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184903/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julien Bobineau received funding from the Bavarian Elite Network in form of a PhD scholarship, provided by the Federal Government of Bavaria (Germany). </span></em></p>For relations with the DRC to truly improve, the Belgian state must acknowledge its historical responsibility more strongly.Julien Bobineau, Assistant Professor, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität JenaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821502022-05-09T13:35:03Z2022-05-09T13:35:03ZNew book unpacks the complexities of whiteness in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460535/original/file-20220429-19-vyzzmr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A multiracial crowd sings the South African National Anthem at 2019 memorial service for the late rugby Springbok Chester Williams.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rodger Bosch/AFP/ via GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In his latest book <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/roger-southall-296862">sociologist Professor Roger Southall</a>, a prolific researcher who has written extensively about political dynamics in Southern Africa, avoids the “negative and condemnatory” approach generally seen in writing on white South Africans, the creators and beneficiaries of apartheid.</p>
<p>In the preface to the book, <a href="https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781847012890/whites-and-democracy-in-south-africa/">Whites and Democracy in South Africa</a>, he explains that he’s done this to instead undertake a nuanced and constructive assessment of white people’s adjustment to post-apartheid democracy.</p>
<p>Therefore, he enters the South African debate on critical race studies by setting his study apart from whiteness scholarship that assumes</p>
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<p>the homogeneity of white practices, ideas and attitudes and that being white is synonymous with being racist (p. 13).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Southall criticises academic writing that attempts the corrective re-orientation of white people towards adopting more desirable behaviour as “sociologically overambitious” (p. 13).</p>
<p>He regards such scholarship as prescriptive and removed from the everyday experiences of white people. Instead, he insists that analysis of whiteness must be based on empirical research.</p>
<p>With this approach, Southall cuts through the sometimes shrill debate on race in South Africa with findings that are grounded in solid research. The book assists in taking the sometimes overly abstract idea of whiteness to a more useful engagement with white people, and their actions and ideas. The findings provide a welcome update on white people’s political stances after <a href="https://www.gov.za/FreedomDay2022">almost 30 years of democracy</a>.</p>
<h2>Whiteness in South Africa</h2>
<p>The book is based on data collected through eight in-depth qualitative focus group interviews, conducted in the provinces of KwaZulu Natal, Western Cape, Gauteng and Free State. Southall anchors the study with a historical contextualisation, giving the long view over time of specifically the political development of whiteness.</p>
<p>He provides an analysis of the state of liberalism. There’s renewed interest in this because of controversial stances on <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-main-opposition-party-caught-in-an-unenviable-political-bind-150296">race taken by the main opposition Democratic Alliance</a>. The party is the primary representative of liberalism among opposition parties in the country. </p>
<p>He also analyses changes in Afrikaner politics over time, white people as citizens, and explores the politics of representation through to the politics of wealth redistribution.</p>
<p>The study confirms the diversity in the political positions of white people in the country. This is also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Whiteness-Just-isnt-What-Used/dp/B01K0UDD44">found in other work</a>. </p>
<p>Whiteness stands centrally in a racial order in which those positioned as “other” to whiteness are regarded as inferior. But it also creates internal hierarchies through overlapping regimes of domination, whether economic, patriarchal, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/heteronormativity">heteronormative</a> or others. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-1994-miracle-whats-left-159495">South Africa's 1994 'miracle': what's left?</a>
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<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Pretty-Afrikaans-Postapartheid-Africa/dp/1869143760">Analysis</a>, when done from a critical vantage point of taking into account ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality, shows complex intersections within whiteness. In these, women, LGBT and economically marginalised people occupy “lesser” statuses.</p>
<p>Southall’s contribution is to show the political changes within whiteness. Bringing in these internal complexities is important as it guards against <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf">mythologising whiteness</a>, which can make whiteness appear to be an insurmountable form of racial exclusion and dehumanisation.</p>
<h2>Reluctant democrats but without apartheid nostalgia</h2>
<p>One of Southall’s important findings is that limited nostalgia for apartheid exists among his respondents. Not a single respondent expressed the wish that the apartheid dispensation should have continued.</p>
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<img alt="Book cover showing no image ut the words 'Whites and Democracy in South Africa' written several times and the name 'Roger Southall' appearing once." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=886&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/460538/original/file-20220429-18-r3myzi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1113&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p>He shows in this book that white South Africans might be “reluctant democrats”, but they have accepted democracy (p. 239). This might seem like an underwhelming statement to make. But it serves as a reminder that an inclusive democracy in which all South Africans enjoy equal citizenship status was complete anathema to successive ruling white cliques for centuries.</p>
<p>The violent lengths that the white settler group went to, to sustain its dominance, are well recorded. As late in the day as the first half of the 1990s, the then ruling <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/South-Africa/The-National-Party-and-apartheid">National Party</a> had no intention of <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1770073051/ref=olp-opf-redir?aod=1&asin=1770073051&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1">giving up white power</a>.</p>
<p>In 1992 a whites-only <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/161008?seq=1">referendum was held</a>. The result showed support for a transition to democracy. This indicated that not only the apartheid ruling elite but also the majority of white people wished to open up the political space.</p>
<p>This contributed to, as Southall puts it, the country becoming a “failed settler state”. This is a liberating failure that has created the possibility for the extension of human dignity to all in the country. Those who lose sight of this downplay the gains made since the <a href="https://overcomingapartheid.msu.edu/unit.php?id=65-24E-6">end of official apartheid in 1994</a>.</p>
<p>However, the point is not to congratulate white people. Historical conditions mostly beyond their control forced a rethink of political positions beyond the small groups of whites who were already critical. Sustained white dissidence against colonialism and apartheid falls beyond the scope of the book. But, it is important again to keep in mind the multiplicity in white people’s political positions.</p>
<h2>Needed: a ‘politics of responsibility’</h2>
<p>The study finds that white people are willing to admit to the “wrongness” of apartheid, even as they deflect responsibility to apartheid-era securocratic and political elites. They had “a sense of relief” when the country finally transitioned to democracy in the 1990s.</p>
<p>However, respondents in the study do not support redress to correct the effects of colonial and apartheid racist policies. This is despite the legacy of white privilege that remains highly visible in the present. </p>
<p>This worrying finding assists in understanding how white resistance to wealth redistribution partly contributes to continuing black poverty in South Africa.</p>
<p>Foremost postcolonial thinker <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a> is quoted in the book to make the point that what is needed among white people, specifically, is a “politics of responsibility” (p. 240). This would include white people bearing a material responsibility towards black people to undo the ravages of centuries of colonialism.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/democracy-loses-its-glow-for-south-africans-amid-persistent-inequality-181489">Democracy loses its glow for South Africans amid persistent inequality</a>
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</em>
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<p>Southall provides a useful set of criteria to give flesh to South Africa’s unique contribution to the global struggle against racism, namely the decades-old idea of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/42705231?seq=1">non-racialism</a>. When it comes to a “politics of responsibility”, non-racialism necessarily involves a socio-economic dimension. This must take the form of addressing racial inequality, the property question and eradicating black poverty. All this alongside strengthening the commitment to democracy and advancing interracial inclusivity.</p>
<p>He may be circumspect about fitting his book within whiteness scholarship. But Southall’s latest work adds significant insights to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Critical-Studies-in-Whiteness/Hunter-Westhuizen/p/book/9780367403799">a newly critical literature on studies of whiteness</a>, which seeks fresh pathways out of the destructive conundrum created by race and racism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christi van der Westhuizen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Avoiding trite moralisations, Professor Southall uses empirical research to shed light on white South Africans’ adjustment to democracy.Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Centre for the Advancement of Non-Racialism and Democracy (CANRAD), Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1822142022-05-03T20:49:42Z2022-05-03T20:49:42ZNo, Biden can’t just sell off seized Russian yachts and central bank assets to help aid Ukraine – international law and the US Constitution forbid it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461032/original/file-20220503-19379-xgcgk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=302%2C87%2C6205%2C4244&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Biden wants to find a way to seize oligarch-owned yachts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUkraineWar-SanctionsExplainer/2b8b144590104677b1f74bd58e0552fb/photo?Query=us%20Russian%20yacht&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=21&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Francisco Ubilla</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Biden administration <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/joe-biden-wants-to-sell-russian-yachts-ukraine-aid">wants to sell off the yachts, homes and other luxury assets</a> it has seized from Russian oligarchs and use those proceeds to support reparations for Ukraine. </p>
<p>As part of <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/04/28/fact-sheet-white-house-calls-on-congress-to-provide-additional-support-for-ukraine/">his proposal for the latest aid package</a> to Ukraine, President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/04/28/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-request-to-congress-for-additional-funding-to-support-ukraine">is asking lawmakers</a> for the authority to formally confiscate the assets of sanctioned oligarchs to pay to “remedy the harm Russia caused … and help build Ukraine.” The House has already passed a bill <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/27/us/politics/biden-russia-sanctions.html">urging Biden to sell the assets</a>, but it didn’t specifically give him the authority to do so. </p>
<p>Others have encouraged the administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/opinion/russia-war-currency-reserves.html">to sell off the tens of billions of dollars</a> in Russian central bank assets it has frozen. It’s not clear <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/04/28/fact-sheet-white-house-calls-on-congress-to-provide-additional-support-for-ukraine/">from the White House statement</a> whether Biden plans to go after state-owned assets too.</p>
<p>That he has gone to Congress to get permission indicates that his lawyers believe, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/giving-russian-assets-ukraine-freezing-not-seizing">as do I</a>, that <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/chapter-35">current law permits only</a> freezing, and not selling, foreign property in the course of an international crisis. </p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=HyGhJIoAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">I’ve studied and practiced international law</a> for several decades and advised the departments of State and Defense on issues like this one. The idea of forcing Russia to pay reparations for the harm to Ukraine has obvious appeal. But the U.S. needs to comply with constitutional and international law when it does so. </p>
<h2>Freezing vs. confiscating</h2>
<p>You might ask what the difference is <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/cross-border-cases/judicial-cooperation/types-judicial-cooperation/confiscation-and-freezing-assets_en">between seizing or freezing property</a> – forbidding anyone to dispose of or use an asset or take income from it – and confiscating it.</p>
<p>Freezing destroys the economic benefits of ownership. But the owner at least retains the hope that, when the conflict is over and the freeze order ends, the property – or its equivalent in money – will return. Confiscation means selling off the property and giving the proceeds, along with any cash seized, to a designated beneficiary – in this case, people acting on behalf of Ukraine. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/chapter-35">International Economic Emergency Powers Act of 1977</a> permits only freezing, and not selling, foreign property in the course of an international crisis. Congress adopted this law to replace the <a href="https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title50/chapter53&edition=prelim">Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917</a>, which gave the president much broader power to take action against U.S. adversaries in and out of war. </p>
<p>Since then, the U.S. has frequently used the power to seize assets belonging to foreign individuals or nations as an economic sanction to punish what it considers bad behavior. For example, after Iran stormed and seized the American embassy in Tehran, the U.S. government <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/mideast/RS20871.pdf">seized billions of dollars</a> in Iranian assets in the U.S, including cash and property. The U.S. has also frozen assets of Venezuela and the Taliban over ties to terrorism and Russian individuals considered responsible for human rights violations, thanks to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-doesnt-need-to-wait-for-an-invasion-to-impose-sanctions-on-russia-it-could-invoke-the-magnitsky-act-now-176202">Magnitsky Act</a>. </p>
<p>In all these cases, the United States held on to the foreign property rather than sell it off. In some cases, it used the seized property as a bargaining chip toward a future settlement. In 2016, the Obama administration famously returned US$400 million to Iran that the U.S. had <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-37-year-standoff-over-irans-frozen-u-s-dollars-1482956855">seized after the embassy siege</a> in 1979 – delivering stacks of Swiss francs stuffed inside a Boeing 737. In other cases, the assets remain under government control, administered by an office of the U.S. Treasury, in hope that eventually some compromise can be reached.</p>
<p>The Patriot Act, adopted in the wake of 9/11, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ56/pdf/PLAW-107publ56.pdf">created a limited exception</a> to the confiscation ban in instances in which the United States is at war. The U.S. never has used this authority. And despite the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/04/29/1095458518/russia-ukraine-us-military-aid">increasingly heated rhetoric</a>, <a href="https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/ukraine-russia-related-sanctions">stepped-up sanctions</a> and <a href="https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-ukraine">growing aid for Ukraine</a>, the U.S. is not at war with Russia. </p>
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<img alt="A large crowd of Iranian protesters press against the gates of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461088/original/file-20220503-12-hrf49y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The US frozen billions worth of Iranian assets after the siege of the American embassy in Tehran.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/NBAAt751970sTimeline/740b324279c943ca843cc907fc714a78/photo?Query=iran%20us%20embassy&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1132&currentItemNo=19">AP Photo</a></span>
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<h2>Redressing gross violations</h2>
<p>A fundamental principle of justice says those who cause harm while breaking the law should pay.</p>
<p>In international law, we call this “reparations.” As the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/basic-principles-and-guidelines-right-remedy-and-reparation">United Nations puts it</a>, “Adequate, effective and prompt reparation is intended to promote justice by redressing gross violations of international human rights law or serious violations of international humanitarian law.” </p>
<p>In recent history, victors have often forced reparations on the losers of war – as was the case <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/reparations">following both World War I and World War II</a> – especially when they are deemed responsible for massive death and ruin.</p>
<p>Russia has wrought terrible destruction in Ukraine. Several cities, including Mariupol, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/ukraine-before-after-destruction-photos/">are all but destroyed</a>, and evidence of war crimes in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-war-crimes-7791e247ce7087dddf64a2bbdcc5b888">places like Bucha is mounting</a>. </p>
<p>So it makes sense that so many scholars, lawmakers and others would argue that the regime of Vladimir Putin and those who benefit from his rule should help pay for it. </p>
<p>Some, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/opinion/russia-war-currency-reserves.html">such as Harvard legal scholar Laurence Tribe, argue</a> U.S. law <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-04-19/how-ukraine-can-build-back-better">already allows</a> the president to use any seized or frozen asset as reparations. But, as <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/50aae1a2-088a-47f9-b936-30fa02cf03de">other experts have pointed out</a>, doing so has serious problems. The legal issues noted above are one major hurdle and open this up to being challenged in court. </p>
<p>Another is political. Confiscating assets <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/30/rebuilding-ukraine-make-putin-pay-00021649">takes away important bargaining chips</a> in any future negotiations, as they have been with Iran and other countries. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/30/rebuilding-ukraine-make-putin-pay-00021649">Specialists</a> in <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/81165/why-proposals-for-u-s-to-liquidate-and-use-russian-central-bank-assets-are-legally-unavailable/">sanctions law</a> – <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/giving-russian-assets-ukraine-freezing-not-seizing">including me</a> – agree with Biden that Congress needs to pass a new law.</p>
<h2>Punishing Russia while preserving the rule of law</h2>
<p>The question then becomes what that legislation should look like to avoid running afoul of international law and the U.S. Constitution. There still seem to be several limitations on what Congress can do.</p>
<p>For example, the Constitution’s <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process">Fifth Amendment guarantees due process</a> before the government can confiscate a private citizen’s property. But does this apply to property in the U.S. that belongs to a foreign citizen? The answer seems to be yes, at least according to two <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/315/203">Supreme</a> <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/282/481">Court</a> cases.</p>
<p>Selling off Russian state property such as central bank assets, creates other problems. International law provides a certain degree of immunity from confiscation to foreign nations and their assets overseas. Outside of wartime, confiscation of state property, including U.S. deposits of Russia’s central bank, <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/81165/wh%20%20%20y-proposals-for-u-s-to-liquidate-and-use-russian-central-bank-assets-are-legally-unavailable/">runs up against these challenges</a>. </p>
<p>A case currently before the International Court of Justice will decide <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/164">whether the United States violated this rule</a> when it used funds from frozen Iranian central bank deposits to compensate people who had won a default judgment from Iran for supporting terrorists. </p>
<p>[<em>More than 150,000 readers get one of The Conversation’s informative newsletters.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-140K">Join the list today</a>.]</p>
<p>So, yes, I believe that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is outrageous and demands a response. But that doesn’t mean the U.S. and other countries should ride roughshod over international law and the U.S. Constitution to do so. Congress should be able to craft a law that allows some assets to be confiscated without violating due process or international law.</p>
<p>I predict that disregarding these issues will likely produce embarrassing judicial setbacks that will make it harder to help Ukraine down the road.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182214/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Stephan worked in the past as an expert witness in support of Naftogaz, the Ukrainian national oil and gas company, in its efforts to use international investment law to obtain compensation for the seizure by Russia of its assets in Crimea. </span></em></p>The US has frozen tens of billions of dollars worth of assets belonging to Russians and their government. A legal scholar explains why confiscating them is a bit trickier.Paul B. Stephan, John C. Jeffries Jr. Distinguished Professor of Law and David H. Ibbeken '71 Research Professor of Law, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1774852022-03-03T15:32:27Z2022-03-03T15:32:27ZUganda-DRC reparations verdict raises questions about the price of justice<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449524/original/file-20220302-27-1f9b9uk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mother and child fleeing fighting between DRC and rebels backed by Ugandan forces shelter at a refugee camp in Zambia in 2003.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Natalie Behring-Chisholm/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2005, the International Court of Justice <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/116/116-20051219-JUD-01-00-EN.pdf">found</a> that Uganda had committed serious violations of international law during the 1998-2003 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). </p>
<p>The court found that Uganda had:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>committed acts of killing, torture and other forms of inhumane treatment of the Congolese civilian population, destroyed villages and civilian buildings, failed to distinguish between civilian and military targets and to protect the civilian population in fighting with other combatants, trained child soldiers, incited ethnic conflict and failed to take measures to put an end to such conflict. (para 345)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That judgement concluded Uganda was liable for damage to the DRC. But it left the question of how much Uganda should pay up to the parties to decide. </p>
<p>These negotiations <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/116">ultimately failed</a> and the DRC took Uganda back to the court in 2015. The court has now determined that <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/116/116-20220209-JUD-01-00-EN.pdf">Uganda must pay the DRC US$325 million in reparations</a>.</p>
<p>This award represents a mixed victory for the DRC. On the one hand, it is much less than the $11 billion it sued for. On the other hand, it’s a significant award, both in terms of money and policy. The International Court of Justice has not traditionally been asked to award reparations. Its determination that Uganda must pay the DRC $65 million annually over the next five years represents a significant avenue for recognition of violations of international law.</p>
<p>In analysing the judgement and its implications, international law scholars have focused on the <a href="https://lieber.westpoint.edu/icj-armed-activities-reparations-judgment/">rules of evidence</a>. Of particular interest is <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-international-court-of-justices-2022-reparations-judgment-in-drc-v-uganda-a-new-methodology-for-human-rights-in-inter-state-disputes/">how damages are calculated</a>.</p>
<p>The case is also significant because states are turning to this court more frequently to try cases involving violations of international humanitarian law, the laws of war. But it also raises a broader question of what happens when a court that’s designed to keep international peace starts assigning crippling damage awards.</p>
<p>If participation in international law practice carries deep financial risks to states, they may be less willing to engage. This could carry risks for the peaceful resolution of disputes.</p>
<h2>Late to the party</h2>
<p>There is a legal truism: <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803110448446">where there is a right, there is a remedy</a>. If the legally recognised harm you have suffered is irreversible (death, destruction, or actions with long-term consequences), the remedy is usually financial: reparations. Domestic courts have developed methods and legal principles for calculating what harm and legal violations should “cost”.</p>
<p>Public international law, the law that governs states, has been slow to follow. As I argue <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/book/the-justice-laboratory/">in my book on international law in Africa</a>, one reason is that international courts are based on consent. With few enforcement mechanisms, symbolism is frequently their most effective tool. </p>
<p>Indeed, Uganda <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/public/files/case-related/116/116-20160928-WRI-01-00-EN.pdf">argued</a> that compensation was unnecessary because the court had vindicated the DRC’s claims. </p>
<p>This reasoning echoes rationales provided by the court itself in previous cases. For example, in its <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2007/02/210142-un-world-court-acquits-serbia-genocide-bosnia-finds-it-guilty-inaction#:%7E:text=The%20International%20Court%20of%20Justice,Bosnian%20Muslims%20in%20the%20town">2007 Bosnia v. Serbia judgment</a> the court stated that its findings were satisfaction enough and Bosnia was not entitled to financial compensation from Serbia. </p>
<p>This is not because the idea of financial reparation does not exist in international public law. In 1928, the Permanent Court of International Justice established the principle of reparation and <a href="http://www.worldcourts.com/pcij/eng/decisions/1928.09.13_chorzow1.htm">ruled</a> that “reparation must, as far as possible, wipe out all consequences of the illegal act and reestablish the situation which would, in all probability, have existed if that act had not been committed.” </p>
<p>This strong standard has <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/award-of-compensation-by-international-tribunals-in-inter-state-cases-icj-decision-in-the-diallo-case/">rarely been applied</a>. In the 20th century, the International Court of Justice awarded reparations for interstate claims only once, in the 1949 <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/1">Corfu Channel</a> case. In the 21st century, prior to the Uganda reparations award, the court made only two reparations awards, each for very small sums (<a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/103">$95,000 to Guinea</a>; <a href="https://www.icj-cij.org/en/case/150">$300,000 to Costa Rica</a>).</p>
<p>Other international courts and court-like bodies, however, are developing <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-limits-of-the-law-putting-reparations-into-practice/">reparations jurisprudence</a>. The International Criminal Court has begun to <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-ntaganda-reparations-order-a-marked-step-towards-a-victim-centred-reparations-legal-framework-at-the-icc/">focus on reparations</a> to victims as a necessary element for giving the court’s work impact. Human rights courts, which hear claims of citizens against their governments, have substantial histories of awarding reparations, and a high rate of compliance with their decisions. </p>
<h2>Outstanding questions</h2>
<p>While reparations practices are growing in international courts covering many jurisdictions, challenges remain. The DRC-Uganda judgement highlights several of these. </p>
<p>First, there are questions of <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-international-court-of-justices-2022-reparations-judgment-in-drc-v-uganda-a-new-methodology-for-human-rights-in-inter-state-disputes/">how to calculate damage and liability</a>. While the court’s 2005 condemnation of Uganda was unequivocal, the 2022 reparations judgement rejects most of the DRC’s arguments regarding damages. It rejects future damages and arguments regarding long-lasting harm as well. </p>
<p>Next there is the question of punitive versus compensatory damages. Punitive damages are higher than mere compensation. They are awarded to hurt the party that committed the harm and discourage harmful behaviour. </p>
<p>The International Court of Justice does not award punitive damages, and restricts its compensatory damage scheme to those damages where a direct connection between the harm and the responsible state can be established. But many of the damages the court recognised in its 2005 judgement arose from harms recognised by international criminal law. International criminal law, which can sentence convicted individuals to jail, is certainly punitive. </p>
<p>There is thus an argument to be made that certain international law violations, such as those Uganda committed in the DRC, should carry the possibility of punitive reparations. </p>
<p>As I have <a href="http://link.law.upenn.edu/portal/Modeling-justice--perfecting-the-promise-of/to93AgqL2xs/">argued elsewhere</a>, international criminal law relaxes criminal law’s standards of evidence, so that war criminals will not benefit from the chaotic circumstances they helped create. </p>
<p>Applying punitive damages for violations of international humanitarian law could get around the problem of proving the DRC’s claims. It would put states at the same level of risk that their citizens already face from international criminal law. </p>
<p>Of course, many historians locate the seeds of World War II in the <a href="https://www.history.com/news/treaty-of-versailles-world-war-ii-german-guilt-effects">punitive reparations scheme of the Treaty of Versailles following World War I</a>. This perhaps gives us pause as we consider how international courts should punish states, particularly as regards <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1468-2230.12562">“crippling”</a> damage awards.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the question of compliance. Uganda has been ordered to pay $65 million annually for the next five years. It says it cannot. As law professor Diane Desierto notes, the International Court of Justice does <a href="https://www.ejiltalk.org/the-international-court-of-justices-2022-reparations-judgment-in-drc-v-uganda-a-new-methodology-for-human-rights-in-inter-state-disputes/">not even have the administrative capacity</a> to follow whether Uganda is complying.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177485/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerstin Bree Carlson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The case raises the question of what happens when a court that’s designed to keep international peace starts assigning crippling damage awards.Kerstin Bree Carlson, Associate Professor International Law, Roskilde UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1729062021-12-08T14:14:20Z2021-12-08T14:14:20ZWhy it’s time to make ecocide a crime: for the sake of its victims<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436341/original/file-20211208-141178-1gh66xg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5176%2C3445&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Campaigners against ecocide are calling for it to become an international crime.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/menetekel/50531272807">Menetekel/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In November, the world’s first <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/05/global-citizens-assembly-to-be-chosen-for-un-climate-talks">global citizens’ assembly</a> – made up of 100 people chosen by lottery from around the world – declared its recommended responses to the climate crisis at the UN climate conference <a href="https://theconversation.com/glasgow-climate-pact-where-do-all-the-words-and-numbers-we-heard-at-cop26-leave-us-171704">COP26</a>. Among these recommendations was that causing severe environmental destruction, or “ecocide”, should become a crime. </p>
<p>The assembly drew from a proposal by the <a href="https://www.stopecocide.earth/">Stop Ecocide</a> foundation, which <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/22/legal-experts-worldwide-draw-up-historic-definition-of-ecocide">defines ecocide</a> as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with the knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.</p>
<p>Campaigners hope that this definition will be adopted by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-next-for-the-troubled-international-criminal-court-129038">International Criminal Court</a> (ICC). If it were, ecocide would join genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes on the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/resource-library/documents/rs-eng.pdf">list</a> of the world’s most serious crimes.</p>
<p>Calls to criminalise ecocide date back to the <a href="http://rbdi.bruylant.be/public/modele/rbdi/content/files/RBDI%201973/RBDI%201973-1/RBDI%201973.1%20-%20pp.%201%20%C3%83%C2%A0%2027%20-%20Richard%20Falk.pdf">1970s</a>, following America’s devastating use of the chemical <a href="http://ewa.home.amu.edu.pl/Zierler,%20The%20Invention%20of%20Ecocide-Introduction.pdf">Agent Orange</a> in the Vietnam War. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/agent-orange-exposed-how-u-s-chemical-warfare-in-vietnam-unleashed-a-slow-moving-disaster-84572">enormous harm</a> it caused to both the environment (destroying forests and decimating biodiversity) and humans (harming or killing thousands of people) sparked proposals for an international law against ecocide. </p>
<p>While initially unsuccessful, recent years have seen an unprecedented surge in support for the criminalisation of ecocide, including from the <a href="https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP18/GD.VAN.2.12.pdf">Republic of Vanuatu</a>, the <a href="https://asp.icc-cpi.int/iccdocs/asp_docs/ASP18/GD.MDV.3.12.pdf">Republic of Maldives</a>, <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5ca2608ab914493c64ef1f6d/t/5fe1e759b356721fce380f27/1608640346408/GD.BEL.14.12+%282%29.pdf">Belgium</a>, <a href="https://www.stopecocide.earth/press-releases-summary/france-writes-ecocide-into-law-in-two-ways">France</a> and the <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2021-0014_EN.html">EU</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Fire burns in a field" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436339/original/file-20211208-25-1yvrh0x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ecocide reparations could help damaged landscapes be restored.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/5559102272">UN_photo/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>Campaigners claim that this will put an end to <a href="https://www.stopecocide.earth/making-ecocide-a-crime">corporate immunity</a> by holding individuals in positions of corporate power to account for their destructive decisions. But less attention has been given to another benefit: the ICC’s power to award reparations to victims. </p>
<h2>What are reparations?</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/ReparationCompensation.aspx#:%7E:text=Reparations%20may%20include%20monetary%20compensation,victims%20in%20the%20particular%20case.">Reparations</a> are forms of compensation made to victims of crimes. The ICC has established that reparations can be <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/record.aspx?docNo=ICC-01/04-01/06-3129">awarded</a> for physical or psychological harm committed against a natural person (meaning a human being) or a legal person (meaning some organisations). </p>
<p>Currently, these reparations cannot be awarded to non-human beings like animals, or to the natural world itself. This means that currently, any reparations awarded for ecocide would have to be to humans and human organisations. Nevertheless, the ability to award reparations could provide victims of ecocide with the opportunity to restore, or memorialise, what they’ve lost – as well as potentially helping to prevent future environmental destruction.</p>
<p>For example, the ICC could award funds for an environmental restoration project benefiting victims of ecocide. This might include a reforestation or <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-biodiversity-and-why-does-it-matter-9798">biodiversity project</a> for a community that had previously relied on a damaged ecosystem for sustenance. </p>
<p>While the ICC hasn’t done this before, previous examples can be found elsewhere. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has <a href="https://corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_245_ing.pdf">awarded</a> reforestation programmes to the Kichwa Indigenous community in Ecuador, while the New South Wales Land and Environment court in Australia has <a href="https://efface.eu/sites/default/files/publications/Presentation%20-%20Rob%20White%20-%20Tailored%20Sanctions%20in%20Australia/index.pdf">ordered</a> people convicted of destroying endangered animals’ habitats to arrange and fund restoration projects.</p>
<p>What’s more, the law could allow victims to be financially compensated for things like the pollution of rivers used for fishing or the destruction of spiritually significant land. Other courts have <a href="http://cidh.org/countryrep/indigenous-lands09/Chap.X.htm">awarded compensation</a> for similar harms: such as to the Saramaka Indigenous community in <a href="https://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_172_ing.pdf">Suriname</a> for the loss of spiritual connections to their territory, marred by logging. </p>
<p>Reparations could even be used to provide access to clean water, food and environmentally sustainable income for locals. The ICC – through its associated body, the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/tfv">Trust Fund for Victims</a> – has previously <a href="https://www.trustfundforvictims.org/en/about/two-mandates-tfv/assistance">supported</a> beekeeping training and tree planting in Northern Uganda, to help victims of the <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opensecurity/what-will-it-take-to-end-conflict-with-lra/">conflict</a> between the Lord’s Resistance Army and national authorities earn money. </p>
<p>The ICC could also explore <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article/14/1/165/5803872">symbolic reparations</a>. This could involve the convicted person publicly apologising and acknowledging the suffering they’ve caused. This might not seem as valuable as providing money or restorative projects to victims. However, it could help acknowledge the reality of what has been lost and establish ecocide as a serious crime on the world stage.</p>
<p>Taking inspiration from environmental <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/peace-parks">peacebuilding efforts</a> around the world, symbolic reparations could include creating restorative memorial parks, or “<a href="https://prize.equatorinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/formidable/6/Salween-Peace-Park-Briefer-2018.pdf">peace parks</a>”. These could be used by suffering communities as memorials, while supporting local conservation work. </p>
<p>Going further, the ICC might consider awarding even more “<a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/record.aspx?docNo=ICC-01/04-02/06-2659">transformative reparations</a>” that challenge social inequality. These could be designed to allow marginalised communities more say in managing natural resources.</p>
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<img alt="A stone mural in a park" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/436336/original/file-20211208-137612-1sadja1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peace parks, like this one in Santiago, Chile, might play a role in memorialising environmental crimes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Santiago_Chile_-_Peace_Park-1.jpg">David Berkowitz/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>A type of transformative reparation is a “<a href="https://www.graduateinstitute.ch/communications/news/guaranteeing-non-repetition-human-rights-violations#:%7E:text=Guarantees%20of%20non%2Drepetition%20are,action%20that%20reinforce%20each%20other.">guarantee of non-repetition</a>”, designed to stop similar crimes from happening again. In an example from Mali, the ICC <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/Pages/record.aspx?docNo=ICC-01/12-01/15-236">requested</a> that its Trust Fund for Victims collaborate with the Mali government to prevent future attacks against <a href="https://theconversation.com/timbuktu-destruction-landmark-ruling-awards-millions-to-malians-82540">Timbuktu</a>’s protected cultural heritage.</p>
<p>In the context of ecocide, guarantees of non-repetition might involve training local people in environmental protection, or strengthening weak environmental regulations. However, these broader goals would require government or corporate support to achieve and would need to be explicitly linked to the crimes of the convicted person.</p>
<p>This highlights a key limitation of the ICC: that it is <a href="https://voelkerrechtsblog.org/a-missed-opportunity-for-accountability/">constrained</a> in what it can do alone. Meaningful environmental restoration in the aftermath of ecocide requires a whole host of participants, including national governments and corporations, who may not be willing to cooperate. And since the ICC doesn’t hold jurisdiction over corporations, it can’t demand broader changes in corporate practices that may be causing environmental harm.</p>
<p>But getting the ICC involved in the fight for ecological justice still allows us to treat ecocide as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/human-progress-is-no-excuse-to-destroy-nature-a-push-to-make-ecocide-a-global-crime-must-recognise-this-fundamental-truth-164594">life-altering</a>, extraordinarily destructive crime it is. When faced with a climate crisis and an age of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-mass-extinction-and-are-we-in-one-now-122535">mass extinction</a>, we must use all the tools in our arsenal – including law – to protect and repair the natural world. </p>
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<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Killean does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Criminalising ecocide means its victims will be able to receive reparations, helping to rebuild destroyed ecosystems and communities.Rachel Killean, Senior Lecturer in Law, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1718042021-11-14T20:42:37Z2021-11-14T20:42:37ZCOP26 deal: how rich countries failed to meet their obligations to the rest of the world<p>COP26, the recently concluded UN climate change conference in Glasgow, marked a critical turning point in global politics. From now on, the issue of climate justice will be unavoidable for rich countries.</p>
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<p>The Glasgow Climate Pact “urges” rich countries like the US (referred to as “developed countries” in the text) to increase funding for poor countries like Bangladesh (“developing countries”) to around US$40 billion (£29.8 billion) annually by 2025, to help them adapt to mounting floods, droughts and other effects of climate change. </p>
<p>This is pretty strong language in UN speak and is welcome support. But the rich world has a history of failing to meet its financial promises. Only <a href="https://theconversation.com/glasgow-cop26-climate-finance-pledges-from-rich-nations-are-inadequate-and-time-is-running-out-169686">80% of the US$100 billion</a> promised annually by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate their emissions and adapt to climate change has been delivered.</p>
<p>The failure to meet the amount developing countries need to adapt to climate change means the world faces a life sentence of escalating climate impacts. Those impacts that we won’t be able to prevent or adapt to are referred to as “<a href="https://unfccc.int/topics/adaptation-and-resilience/the-big-picture/introduction-to-loss-and-damage">loss and damage</a>” in the lingo of international climate policy and they are already beginning to bite in the most vulnerable countries. The failure of COP26 to <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-glasgow-climate-pact-171799">commit to keeping warming below 1.5°C</a> will mean more such loss and damage in future.</p>
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<img alt="People cross a wooden bridge to escape flood water." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3228%2C2161&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/431819/original/file-20211114-105969-1qw723t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to increasing storms and floods.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/dohar-bangladesh-august-5-2016-heavy-464414945">Sohel Parvez Haque/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>Some consider work on loss and damage to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/who-should-pay-for-damage-associated-with-climate-change-and-who-should-be-compensated-84028">a form of compensation</a> for the harm rich countries have indirectly caused poor ones by disproportionately contributing to climate change with their greenhouse gas emissions. Others prefer the term “climate reparations”, and yet others talk about “<a href="https://www.iied.org/new-solidarity-funds-could-ringfence-finance-for-loss-damage">solidarity funds</a>”. </p>
<p>However you describe it, the fine print of the previous UN climate treaty, the 2015 Paris agreement, sought to squash any notion of developed countries being liable. But the outcome of COP26 shows that the issue of who is responsible and who should pay for the consequences of climate change can no longer be ignored. However, even the annual climate funding that has been pledged doesn’t include any money allocated for loss and damage.</p>
<h2>Who should pay?</h2>
<p>The idea of <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/glep/article/16/4/111/14859/Framing-Climate-Change-Loss-and-Damage-in-UNFCCC">paying for loss and damage</a> was introduced with the first UN climate treaty negotiations in 1991 as something owed to small island states. But over the years, other groups, including the poorest countries and others across Africa, have begun to champion the issue.</p>
<p>Thanks to major advances in the field of <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/">attribution science</a>, there is growing understanding of the precise link between human-caused emissions and specific severe weather events. This relationship will intensify with every tonne of emissions, and for many of these climate-consequences, there is no turning back.</p>
<h2>Loss and damage in Glasgow</h2>
<p>Heading into the Glasgow summit, delegates were mindful of the growing adaptation needs of developing countries. Adapting to climate change isn’t straightforward: even the UK, for all its wealth and its relative lack of exposure, <a href="https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/independent-assessment-of-uk-climate-risk/">isn’t getting it right</a>.</p>
<p>In the lead up to COP26, all countries were expected to update their climate action plans, known as NDCs. Recent <a href="http://www.climate-loss-damage.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/LD_NDC_PB.pdf">analysis</a> showed an increasing number were talking about loss and damage in their plans. This makes sense: as countries increasingly have to divert resources towards preparing for and responding to disasters like cyclones, or sea-level rise and melting glaciers, there will be less public financing available for them to cut their emissions and contribute to meeting the 1.5°C goal.</p>
<h2>More talk?</h2>
<p>There was important progress in Glasgow. But much of this came from outside the negotiating rooms.</p>
<p>The negotiators working on loss and damage conducted their talks late into the night to flesh out what the <a href="https://unfccc.int/santiago-network">Santiago Network</a> – a new way of offering technical assistance to developing countries – should be doing to support countries in a practical way. But progress was slow and calls to set up a “Glasgow Loss and Damage Facility” which would have provided financial support for vulnerable countries <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-us-block-financial-support-climate-change-cop26/">went unheeded</a>. </p>
<p>Agreed instead was the establishment of a “Glasgow Dialogue” to discuss funding arrangements over the coming years. This could be an important step to real, material support for vulnerable countries. But in some ways, this feels like deja vu. </p>
<p>COP23 in 2017 established a “Suva Expert Dialogue” – a two-day workshop which produced a <a href="https://sdg.iisd.org/news/unfccc-publishes-report-of-the-suva-expert-dialogue-on-loss-and-damage/">technical paper</a> – to explore information on finance for loss and damage. COP24 the following year and COP25 in 2019 pushed for the establishment of an expert group on loss and damage which was finally launched in early 2021. </p>
<p>Progress is incremental, but with all these dialogues it’s no wonder that young protesters decry this “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/greta-thunberg-cop26-blah-b1957364.html">blah, blah, blah</a>” approach to climate action.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-glasgow-climate-pact-171799">Five things you need to know about the Glasgow Climate Pact</a>
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</em>
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<p>One surprise in Glasgow was the symbolic and material support for loss and damage which came from those outside the negotiating room. Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, <a href="https://www.gov.scot/news/scotland-to-boost-climate-funding/">promised</a> £2 million of funding to alleviate the impacts of climate change. This was augmented by a US$3 million dollar <a href="https://ciff.org/news/philanthropies-offer-kick-start-funds-for-prospective-glasgow-loss-damage-facility-to-support-vulnerable-countries-suffering-from-climate-change/">pledge</a> from philanthropists. Since then, a Belgian provincial climate minister has also committed €1 million.</p>
<p>This is a drop in the ocean. It nonetheless represents an interesting twist in terms of who is stepping up to take responsibility for the harm that climate change is already causing and looks set to cause in the future.</p>
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<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="COP26: the world's biggest climate talks" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424739/original/file-20211005-17-cgrf2z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong>This story is part of The Conversation’s coverage on COP26, the Glasgow climate conference, by experts from around the world.</strong>
<br><em>Amid a rising tide of climate news and stories, The Conversation is here to clear the air and make sure you get information you can trust. <a href="https://page.theconversation.com/cop26-glasgow-2021-climate-change-summit/"><strong>More.</strong></a></em> </p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Vanhala has received funding from the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy. She has consulted for the Baring Foundation, the Lankelly Chase Foundation, the Legal Education Foundation and the Local Trust. She has also consulted for the Public Law Project, Access Social Care, Impact Social Justice, the Central England Law Centre, Practical Action, Greenpeace International, Independent Age and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. She sits on the Sustainable Future grant-making committee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.</span></em></p>Loss and damage – the three words which define the Glasgow summit’s disappointing outcome.Lisa Vanhala, Professor of Political Science, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1645462021-09-16T12:11:58Z2021-09-16T12:11:58ZHow reparations can be paid through school finance reform<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421395/original/file-20210915-23-k7ab9y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5420%2C3753&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Schools in predominantly Black communities receive less funding, even though Black homeowners pay higher tax rates.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/view-of-nine-year-old-african-american-student-linda-brown-news-photo/454410523?adppopup=true">Carl Iwasaki/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>White public schools have <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">always gotten more money</a> than Black public schools. These funding disparities go back to the so-called “<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/133243/men-created-separate-equal">separate but equal</a>” era – which was enshrined into the nation’s laws by the Supreme Court’s 1896 decision in <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1850-1900/163us537">Plessy v. Ferguson</a>.</p>
<p>The disparities have persisted even after <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/347us483">Brown v. Board of Education</a>, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that ordered the desegregation of America’s public schools.</p>
<p>Since Black schools get less funding even though <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">Black homeowners pay higher property taxes</a> than their white counterparts, we think <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">reparations are due</a> – and they can be paid by reforming the ways Black homeowners are taxed and schools in Black communities are funded.</p>
<p>We make this argument as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0NQWga8AAAAJ&hl=en">school finance</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=z-bISjgAAAAJ&hl=en">education law</a> scholars who have studied racial inequality in education for decades. We propose a four-part reparations plan to address racial inequalities in education. The plan deals with: 1) local property taxes, 2) school revenues, 3) targeting funding to close gaps in student outcomes, and 4) federal monitoring.</p>
<h2>1. Tax rebates to Black homeowners</h2>
<p>A big reason for racial funding disparities is housing segregation. This separation has led to vast <a href="http://btbcoalition.org/index%20page%20images/2018.11_Brookings-Metro_Devaluation-Assets-Black-Neighborhoods_final.pdf">differences in housing values</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spz002">wealth</a> that families have been able to accumulate. This in turn <a href="https://www.edworkingpapers.com/ai21-363">affects how much funding can be raised</a> through property taxes for local public schools.</p>
<p>In Connecticut, for example, Black-owned homes are valued on average at about <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$250,000, versus over $420,000 for white-owned homes</a>. Even for homes in the same metro areas within Connecticut with the same number of bedrooms, the <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">difference is $173,000</a>. </p>
<p>Since Black home values overall are lower, higher tax rates are <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">often adopted</a> to generate more local tax revenue. This comes in the form of what we refer to as a “Black Tax.” In Connecticut, the average Black homeowner pays a Black Tax of just over 0.6% in higher property taxes. On a $250,000 home, that <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">amounts to $1,575 per year</a>. But even with higher tax rates, Black communities do not raise the same amount of property tax revenue to fund public schools as white communities in the same state or metropolitan area. Tax rates required to fully close these gaps would simply be too high. In a 2021 article, we documented <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">similar disparities in other states</a>, including Maryland and Virginia.</p>
<p>We recommend direct rebates to Black homeowners in previously redlined or otherwise segregated communities in the amount calculated to cover the Black Tax. For example, the Black Tax in Bridgeport, Connecticut is just over 0.5%. For a home valued at $340,000, the annual rebate amount would be <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">just over $1,800</a>. These rebates would put money in the hands of Black homeowners, who would then have the option to either spend more on their local public schools or increase their personal savings. Either way, we believe they are owed this compensation, including possible cumulative compensation for past overpayment.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Black male teenager studies at a library while listening to music through his earphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421435/original/file-20210915-20-nkgkjd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Black school districts have less taxable wealth compared to white school districts.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/teenage-boy-studying-in-school-library-royalty-free-image/88752144?adppopup=true">Hill Street Studios/DigitalVistion via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>2. Closing racial gaps in school district revenues</h2>
<p>State general aid programs, which are intended to make sure all schools get equitable funding, <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">routinely fall short</a>.</p>
<p>In Connecticut, the average state general aid per Black child is <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$2,756</a> more than the average state general aid per white child. This is because districts serving Black children tend to have less of their own taxable wealth. That is, districts serving more Black children do receive more state general aid than districts serving more white children, but not enough to close the gap <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$4,295</a> in local revenue raised. We calculated that the remaining gap is <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/crsj/vol27/iss2/7/">$1,574 per pupil</a>. Additional state aid to school districts in Black communities could close this gap.</p>
<h2>3. Change how race factors into school aid formulas</h2>
<p><a href="https://docs.google.com/viewerng/viewer?url=https://www.shankerinstitute.org/sites/default/files/moneymatters_edition2.pdf">Money matters</a> for improving schools and <a href="https://www.chalkbeat.org/2017/6/6/21102760/devos-says-school-spending-and-student-outcomes-aren-t-related-but-recent-research-suggests-otherwis">improving student outcomes</a> – from <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w25368/w25368.pdf">test scores to graduation rates and college attendance</a>. School finance reforms have <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w29177#fromrss">proved especially beneficial to Black students</a>. Research is <a href="https://works.bepress.com/c_kirabo_jackson/38/">increasingly clear</a> in this regard. Equitable and adequate financing of public school systems is a necessary condition for ensuring children equal opportunity to succeed.</p>
<p>State school finance formulas <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/06/20-11882_7._primer_policyscan_v3.pdf">include weights</a> – or cost adjustments – for things like how many children live in poverty or how many children have disabilities. The idea is that such children require more money to educate. The <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2011.539957">evidence</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704360">related studies</a> show that, because of governmental policies that created <a href="http://btbcoalition.org/index%20page%20images/2018.11_Brookings-Metro_Devaluation-Assets-Black-Neighborhoods_final.pdf">racial isolation and the economic disadvantage</a> that accompanies it, school and district racial composition is an important factor to include in state school finance formulas. But <a href="https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/06/20-11882_7._primer_policyscan_v3.pdf">no state currently does this</a>. </p>
<h2>4. Eliminate racism in school finance formulas</h2>
<p>Some state aid programs <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED535555.pdf">exacerbate</a> racial disparities, and worse, some are built on the systemic <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/428886">racist policies that created them</a>.</p>
<p>Kansas, like many states, imposes strict <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0275-1100.2004.00344.x">revenue limits, or caps</a>, on revenue that can be raised locally in order to maintain equity. But a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40704338">2005 provision</a> added to their school funding formula raised the cap for 16 districts with higher average housing values, <a href="https://www.thepitchkc.com/funny-math/">based on the claim</a> that those districts needed to pay teachers more to live in their districts. But this specific provision almost uniformly applied to predominantly white districts where most neighborhoods had <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.00268">racially restrictive covenants in earlier decades</a>.</p>
<p>The provision excluded neighboring districts where homes had been devalued by redlining because they were inhabited by Black residents. These neighboring districts also presently use their <a href="https://www.ksde.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=8rP50roDAoQ%3d&tabid=398&portalid=0&mid=2427">maximum taxing authority</a>.</p>
<p>We recommend federal audits of state school finance systems to identify features of those systems that exacerbate racial disparities and may in fact be built on systemic racial discrimination. Since states have thus far been <a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2012/09/19/38189/the-stealth-inequities-of-school-funding/">unwilling</a> to lead these initiatives themselves, we believe they need <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-resourcecomp-201410.pdf">federal encouragement</a>.</p>
<p>The funding adjustment on high-priced houses in Kansas provides one example, but <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/428886">there are others</a>, including state aid programs designed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124507304126">reduce local property tax rates</a> in affluent suburban communities. </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/164546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A school finance expert and an education law scholar make the case for why reparations should be paid to African Americans by changing the way schools are funded.Preston Green III, John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education, University of ConnecticutBruce Baker, Professor of Education, Rutgers UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1623342021-09-03T12:37:44Z2021-09-03T12:37:44ZSlavery was the ultimate labor distortion – empowering workers today would be a form of reparations<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418876/original/file-20210901-16-nd6f8p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4308%2C2360&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Labor violations disproportionately affect Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/labor-groups-and-workers-including-john-beard-with-the-la-news-photo/567385215?adppopup=true">Katie Falkenberg/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The conversation about reparations for slavery entered a new stage earlier in 2021, with the U.S. House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/986853285/house-lawmakers-advance-historic-bill-to-form-reparations-commission">voting for the creation of a commission</a> to address the matter.</p>
<p>The bill, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/40">H.R. 40</a>, has been introduced every Congress since 1989 by Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and John Conyers, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/27/773919009/john-conyers-jr-who-represented-michigan-for-5-decades-dies-at-90">until his death in 2019</a>. But this year marks the first time that its request to study and develop reparation proposals for African Americans has cleared the committee stage. </p>
<p>Calls to redress the lasting impact of slavery and racial discrimination have been amplified recently following further evidence of the impact of systemic racism – both through the <a href="https://covidtracking.com/race">disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community</a> and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others at the hands of U.S. police.</p>
<h2>Disruption of labor relations</h2>
<p>To many, the question going forward is not so much whether or not reparations are in order, but what kinds of reparations might be appropriate.</p>
<p>Most of the conversation to date has focused on reparations in terms of payouts of some form. Prominent author <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/">Ta-Nehisi Coates</a>, in a powerful argument for reparations, said payments must be made by white America to Black America – much as <a href="https://qz.com/1915185/how-germany-paid-reparations-for-the-holocaust/">Germany started paying Israel in 1952</a> to compensate for the persecution of Jews by the Nazis.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://divinity.vanderbilt.edu/people/bio/joerg-rieger">scholar who has written on economic justice and the labor movement</a>, I agree that reparations must have economic substance, because the impact of racism is inherently linked with power and money. But my <a href="https://chalicepress.com/products/unified-we-are-a-force">research suggests another model</a> for reparations: If one of the most significant aspects of slavery – even if not the only one – was a massive disruption of labor relations, then a crucial part in the reparations discussion could involve reshaping the labor relationship between employers and employees today. </p>
<p>I believe such a reshaping of the labor relationship would substantially benefit the descendants of enslaved people in the United States. Labor, as my research has argued, has implications for all aspects of life and labor reform would, I believe, address many of the problems of structural racism as well. In addition, reshaping the labor relationship would also have positive effects for all working people, <a href="https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/country-studies/united-states/">including those who still experience enslavement today</a>. </p>
<h2>Growing racial wage gap</h2>
<p>Labor relations can be considered “distorted” when one party profits disproportionally at the expense of another. In other words, it is a departure from a “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26159/26159-h/26159-h.htm">fair day’s pay for a fair days’s work</a>” – a concept that forms a bedrock demand of the labor movement, alongside good working conditions.</p>
<p>This is not just a matter of money but also of power. Under the conditions of slavery, the distortion of labor relations was nearly complete. Slave owners pocketed the profits and claimed absolute power, while slaves had to obey and risk life and limb for no compensation.</p>
<p>Black Americans continue to be disadvantaged in the labor market today. As CEO compensation <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-surged-14-in-2019-to-21-3-million-ceos-now-earn-320-times-as-much-as-a-typical-worker/">soars</a>, the number of Black CEOs remains remarkably low – there were just <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/fortune-500-black-ceos-business-history/">four Black CEOs at Fortune 500 companies</a> as of March 2021. In general, the wage gap between Black and white employees <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/black-white-wage-gaps-are-worse-today-than-in-2000/">has grown in recent years</a>. Fueling these disparities, as well as building on them, is the structural racism that reparations could be designed to address.</p>
<p>Unionization can be a tool to rebalance labor relations and can <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4300995/">diminish this racial gap</a>, <a href="https://cepr.net/report/black-workers-unions-and-inequality/#five">studies have shown</a>. But union membership in general – and among Black workers in particular – has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/22/workers-are-fired-up-union-participation-is-still-decline-new-statistics-show/">declined in recent decades</a>. And a weaker labor movement is associated, studies show, with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1086/663673">greater racial wage disparity</a>. </p>
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<img alt="Black members of the Domestic Workers Union Members march down a road in protest." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/418983/original/file-20210901-13-vcj2s3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=592&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Unionization can help reduce the racial wage gap.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/domestic-workers-union-members-picketing-news-photo/534275792?adppopup=true">Joseph Schwartz/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Another tool to rebalance labor relations is worker-owned cooperatives, which have a <a href="http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/newsroom/7396.php">long tradition in African American communities</a> as <a href="https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/jessica-gordon-nembhard">economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard</a> has noted. From early on, she points out, “African Americans realized that without economic justice – without economic equality, independence and stability … social and political rights were hollow, or actually not achievable.” Gordon Nembhard’s work also shows that such cooperatives were often fought and ultimately destroyed because they were so successful in empowering African American communities. </p>
<h2>A ‘more permanent’ solution</h2>
<p>Some in the labor movement are beginning to link reparations with union rights. Labor <a href="https://dsgchicago.com/">lawyer Thomas Geoghegan</a> has suggested that the proposed Protecting the Right to Organize Act, a bill before Congress that would strengthen workers’ rights and weaken anti-union right-to-work laws, should be viewed as “a practical form of Black reparations.” He argued in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/160530/labor-law-reform-racial-equality-protecting-right-organize-act">an article for The New Republic</a> that wealth redistribution through union membership is “more permanent and lasting than a check written out as Black reparations, however much deserved, and far more likely to get a return over time.”</p>
<p>While there is considerable disagreement about the profits employers should be able to make from the labor of their employees, there is little disagreement about the wrongness of practices like outright <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">wage theft</a> – which today takes the form of employers not paying part or all promised wages or paying less than mandated minimum wage. Even those who rarely worry about employers making too much profit would for the most part likely agree that wage theft is wrong. Agreement on this matter takes us back to slavery, which might be considered the ultimate wage theft.</p>
<p>Addressing the ongoing legacy of slavery and systemic racism requires not only economic solutions but also improving labor relations and protecting workers against wage discrimination, disempowerment at work, and violations such as wage theft that <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/">disproportionately affect workers of color</a>.</p>
<p>Reparations that fail to pay attention to improving labor relations may not achieve economic equality. The reparations paid to Israel by Germany, for instance, have not helped to achieve economic equality – the Israeli economy is still, alongside the U.S.’s, among the <a href="https://money.cnn.com/2015/05/21/news/economy/worst-inequality-countries-oecd/">most unequal in the developed world</a>, with the richest 10% of each country’s population earning more than 15 times that of the poorest.</p>
<p>Simple monetary payouts are not, I believe, sufficient to solve the problem of racial inequality. Wage theft can again serve as the example here. While repaying stolen wages – as <a href="https://apnews.com/article/76a9403fe9dc4c2daf8a52c38e16284c">New York state did in 2018</a> by returning $35 million to workers – is commendable, repaying stolen wages does not in itself change the skewed relationships between employer and employee that enable wage theft in the first place. Greater empowerment of working people is needed to do that.</p>
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<h2>Benefiting others as well</h2>
<p>So while redistributing money can be part of the solution, it may not go far enough.</p>
<p>Tying reparations to the improvement of labor relations – which can happen through the empowerment of working people or the promotion of <a href="http://www.usworker.coop/home">worker-owned cooperatives</a> – would not only help those most affected by wealth and employment gaps, Black Americans, it would also <a href="http://www.co-opsnow.org">benefit others who have traditionally been discriminated against</a> in employment, such as women, immigrants and many other working people. </p>
<p>Improving labor relations would address systemic racial discrimination where it is often most destructive and painful: at work, where people spend the bulk of their waking hours, and where the economic well-being of families and by extension entire communities can be decided.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joerg Rieger is supporting the work of worker cooperatives, including the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, which is hyperlinked at the end of the piece. He is not on any of their boards and he is not receiving any remuneration.</span></em></p>Rebalancing labor relations so that workers are empowered would be an effective way to address racial wealth disparities and atone for the legacy of slavery, a scholar argues.Joerg Rieger, Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.