Jamaica is planning to ask the United Kingdom for compensation for the Atlantic slave trade in the
former British colony, a senior government official said.
The Caribbean island nation will file a petition that could seek billions of pounds in reparations, pending
legal advice, according to Olivia Grange, Jamaica’s minister of sports, youth and culture.
She said the country hoped for ‘reparatory justice in all forms’ to ‘repair the damages that our ancestors
experienced’.
The former British colonies of the Caribbean were all involved in the slave trade but it is Jamaica alone
that will be asking for compensation.
It comes a decade after The Caribbean Community, a regional organisation, set out to ask for
reparations from Britain, France and the Netherlands.
It was noted at the time that Britain paid £20m to British planters in the Caribbean, the equivalent of
£200bn now, in reparations during emancipation in 1834. No compensation has ever been paid to the
descendants of the victims of slavery.
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