English
FrançaisShaunee Morgan is currently a Salzburg Cutler Program Fellow. The program brings together international law scholars, judges, and practitioners to support emerging scholars on a theme of relevance in international law. Her project proposal looks at the viability and necessity of the Caribbean claim for reparations, situating the claim within existing reparatory justice frameworks. The paper will chart the development of reparations under international law from a doctrinal and philosophical perspective, ultimately arguing that the lack of redress for the historical harms that African and indigenous communities suffered in the Caribbean and the lingering effects of these atrocities represent a major flaw in international human rights discourse. Ultimately if the emerging human rights framework is to have universal legitimacy, it will have to adequately grapple with the legacy of the slave trade and the attempted genocide of native populations.
After almost nine months of planning, Shaunee Morgan along with five classmates organized a symposium at the Law School entitled “Reparations. Now.” on 19 January 2018. The event began with a screening of “The Price of Memory”, Karen Mafundikwa’s film about the reparations movement in Jamaica, specifically the central role that Rastafari have played in the organizing and sustainability of the movement. The symposium itself featured panels and a keynote address examining various reparations claims against US institutions, the US government, at the former colonizing European governments. It can be viewed in its entirety here. She organized the panel focused on the Caribbean claim which brought together the current director of CARICOM’s Reparations Research Centre, a leader in the Garifuna community, and an international law scholar to discuss the regional organizing happening in the Caribbean and the strategies activists might take to realize a successful legal and political claim.
A recap of the symposium was featured on local television in Philadelphia and can be viewed here.
Reparations, as imagined in the reparatory justice framework, is ultimately about accountability and healing. The first pillar demands that harm-doers acknowledge the harm they have done/created and the second allows for victims, particularly, and society generally to heal from the harm. Both pillars require equal participation of both parties and work in tandem to create more peaceful societies.