Reparations for Chattel Slavery: A Call From the ‘Periphery’ to Decolonise International (Human Rights) Law

Abstract

ABSTRACT Global inequities persist despite the achievements of the human rights project so far, as Kofi Annan highlighted in 2005. Caribbean calls for reparations for chattel slavery are a manifestation of and a response to global inequities that affect the Global South in particular. However, when endeavouring to find a footing in international law, and specifically in international human rights law, reparations calls have been contested and challenged. This article proposes a reimagining of the international human rights system to offer a legitimate place for reparations for chattel slavery and thus enable an effective challenge to pressing injustices such as racial discrimination and its ramifications. Despite being a region that has been birthed from such profound historical injustices that still affect the full realisation of human rights today, the Caribbean and its human rights challenges and calls for justice have been relegated to and maintained at the periphery of international human rights law. For that reason, this article focuses on reparations for slavery emanating from the Caribbean. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), it argues that the inability of international legal systems to respond to historical injustices indicates that the colonial imagination, constructed on the compass of exclusion, is still the foundation of international human rights law and of modern, postcolonial societies. The article thus advocates for decolonising international human rights law to accommodate a more inclusive future for human rights.