Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Mem­bers of T&T’s Na­tion­al Repa­ra­tions Com­mit­tee (NRC) will meet to­day with the coun­try’s new am­bas­sador to Cari­com, Ralph Maraj, to dis­cuss Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to the re­gion­al repa­ra­tions move­ment.

Com­mit­tee mem­ber and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ES­CTT), Za­kiya Uzoma-Wada­da, con­firmed the meet­ing yes­ter­day. This fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pledge to re-em­pow­er the com­mit­tee and sup­port Cari­com’s repa­ra­tions agen­da in­ter­na­tion­al­ly dur­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day fes­tiv­i­ties last week.

“It is al­ways good to hear from the Gov­ern­ment. It mat­ters not which gov­ern­ment—what is im­por­tant is the recog­ni­tion of the chal­lenges faced by African peo­ple and the ef­forts to ad­dress them,” Uzoma-Wada­da said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar has said her ad­min­is­tra­tion will push Cari­com’s call for debt re­lief, de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing, and in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form at the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing from Oc­to­ber 21–26.

Uzoma-Wada­da said since the com­mit­tee’s re-es­tab­lish­ment in 2023 un­der chair­man Dr Claudius Fer­gus, it has made sig­nif­i­cant progress. This in­cludes pub­lish­ing its first newslet­ter, host­ing a Repa­ra­tions Week fea­tur­ing a youth con­fer­ence and aware­ness ac­tiv­i­ties, and en­gag­ing com­mu­ni­ties in To­ba­go. The com­mit­tee al­so gained rep­re­sen­ta­tion at the UN’s Per­ma­nent Fo­rum for Peo­ple of African De­scent, where it pre­sent­ed its work in T&T.

Ahead of to­day’s talks with Maraj, Uzoma-Wada­da said the NRC hopes to ad­dress chal­lenges faced over the past year and ex­plore ways to strength­en its work.

“There are repara­to­ry things that need to be done—not on­ly in terms of what is owed by those who en­slaved and colonised us, but al­so in how we en­gage in self-re­pair in our own spaces,” she said.

The meet­ing comes as the re­gion­al repa­ra­tion move­ment gains mo­men­tum. Just over a month ago, Ja­maica an­nounced its in­ten­tion to pe­ti­tion King Charles III to re­fer le­gal ques­tions on slav­ery repa­ra­tions to the Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee of the Privy Coun­cil. The pe­ti­tion, sup­port­ed by Cari­com, will ask the coun­cil to de­ter­mine whether the forced trans­port and en­slave­ment of Africans was law­ful un­der com­mon law, whether lo­cal laws sup­port­ing slav­ery were in­valid, and whether slav­ery in Ja­maica un­til 1838 con­sti­tut­ed a crime against hu­man­i­ty un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law.

If the an­swers favour Ja­maica’s po­si­tion, the coun­try will ar­gue the UK has a le­gal oblig­a­tion to pro­vide repa­ra­tions. The move is viewed as a sig­nif­i­cant step to keep repa­ra­tions in the in­ter­na­tion­al spot­light and pur­sue ac­count­abil­i­ty through le­gal chan­nels.