It is now widely accepted and shown by scholars that the permanent dislocation and forced transportation of over 30 million enslaved Africans to the Caribbean and the wider Americas, and the mutilation and murder of millions unknown, constitute modernity’s greatest crime against humanity. But Western European culture, while aggressively championing the cause of human liberty, political freedom, and the public accountability of government, has so far failed to repair the economic and psychological damage done by native genocide, the transatlantic trade in Africans (TTA), slavery, post-slavery racial apartheid, indentureship and colonialism
Yet, the policy and practice of reparatory justice have been features of global jurisprudence and history for over two centuries. In keeping with this tradition, the 34th Meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Heads of Government held in July 2013 in Trinidad & Tobago, agreed to establish a CARICOM Reparation Commission and National Committees on Reparation, to ascertain the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparation by former colonial European countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community, for native genocide, the transatlantic trafficking of Africans, a racialized system of chattel enslavement, Asian indentureship and the lasting and detrimental impact of colonialism.
We invite scholars working on the issue of Reparatory Justice, especially where the work is focused on the Caribbean, to contribute to a special issue of Social & Economic Studies (SES). Comparative articles on reparation of relevance to the region are also welcome. Articles should be on one of the following themes: Historical Justification (slavery, post-slavery); legal arguments /strategies; legacies of colonialism (health and educational inequities, access to justice, structural discrimination and beneficiaries); native genocide; Asian indentureship. This special issue, to be co-edited by internationally renowned scholars, Prof. Sir Hilary Beckles & Prof. Verene Shepherd, is tentatively titled “’The Debt Has Not Been Paid, the Accounts Have Not Been Settled’: The CARICOM Reparatory Justice Project”, as a tribute to enslaved people who started the movement, Rastafari who stoked the embers of the movement into a conflagration decades after Emancipation, and the late Ambassador and reparation activist, Dudley Thompson.
Social and Economic Studies (ISSN 0037-7651) is a quarterly, peer-reviewed, multi-disciplinary journal that has been published continuously since 1953. The journal is indexed by Scopus, PAIS Bulletin, Sociological Abstracts, Journal of Economic Literature, Abstracts in Anthropology, Current Contents/ Social and Behavioural Sciences, ASSIA and is available in the JSTOR, ProQuest and EBSCO databases. It is also available online at www.mona.uwi.edu/ses.
The deadline for receipt of completed articles is December 1, 2017. Articles of 7,000 – 10,000 words must be submitted in electronic form by email to: ses@uwimona.edu.jm Our preferred style for references is the Chicago Manual author-date system. Please provide a 150-word abstract with up to five keywords.
