Another August is coming to an end and for a fourth consecutive year, Saint Lucians have been able to explore, over an entire month, the depths and breadth of Emancipation and Reparations.
The National Cultural Foundation (NCF) and its National Emancipation Month Committee have again delivered a package of events by local entities inviting citizens to examine what Emancipation meant to the island and the wider Caribbean’s former British colonies.
From the libation at the opening ceremony launching the month of activities at Serenity Park to the Call My Name event in Vieux Fort that drew closer attention to why the enslaved were renamed to rob them of their identities, to the observance of International Day for Remembering Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and its Abolition (on August 23rd) to lectures in Soufriere on Emancipation and Reparations (August 22nd and 28th), to the upcoming observance of International Day for People of African Descent and the Saint Lucia launch of the Second Decade for People of African Descent (Monday, August 31st), it’s simply been another month of sharing and learning – and remembering that there was an Africa before Slavery.
Reparations and Emancipation have now become daily words here, thanks in great part to the decision by Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre on August 1st 2021 – in his first Address to the Nation after his party’s July 26th 2021 election victory and five days before officially taking office — to introduce Emancipation Month as of Emancipation Day 2022.
His other calls in that address for the island’s Kweyol language and Afrcan studies to be taken to local schools are advanced works in progress today.
This progress in enlightenment is consistent with the Caribbean’s continuing forward march on the global reparations frontline, epitomised on March 25th 2026, when 123 members of the United Nations (UN) voted at the General Assembly to designate Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery as ‘The Gravest Crime Against Humanity’.
It’s also consistent with the decision by the African Union (AU), on June 18th 2026, to adopt the now renamed ‘The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) 10-Point Plan (TPP) for Reparatory Justice and Manifesto for the Coming Enlightenment’.
This ‘Coming Enlightenment’ is a global necessity to take the current fifth (5th) stage of the Reparations struggle from being today the most popular Human Rights issue globally — after just 13 years of agitation by the CARICOM Reparations Commission (CRC) — to the next stage: uniting the global movement around a single banner without compromising any of its national components.
Just as Haiti continues to demand refunding of its billions of dollars paid in reparations to France for daring to defeat Britain, France and Spain and to end and outlaw enslavement, Iran is similarly demanding ‘Reparations’ from the US for all its atrocities against the Persian nation since it launched the unprovoked war on February 28th 2026, assassinating its Ayatollah and decapitating its government, to start its continuing effort to erase a civilization that preceded Europe.
Namibia has made it clear it won’t settle for the unjust one-way ‘reparations settlement’ imposed by Germany; and the Sahel States (Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali) have broken from the shackles of Francophone Africa, each demonstrating that the struggle for African Liberation is continuing in a new phase, where continental nations are showing it is possible to break free from the invisible shackles of neo-colonial domination and take control of what’s left of their endless natural resources in their people’s national interests.
Similarly, the launch of CARICOM-AU Day on September 7th 2021 has seen the Caribbean and Africa not only opening new doors of access and return, but also uniting to take the Reparations demands to all global political centres, including the UN and the Commonwealth, where they amount to a significant majority.
Their insistence that Reparations should be on the agenda when King Charles attends the November 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Antigua and Barbuda, is another indication of how far and fast things can go when nations decide to truly unite behind common causes.
The CRC and National Reparations Committees (NRCs) can bask in the sunshine of taking the struggle for Reparatory Justice from the slave ships and plantations to Abolition, Emancipation and Independence, but must not rest on the laurels of over-a-decade of accomplishments.
The upcoming 3rd Caribbean Reparations Conference in Barbados (September 17-19) and the CRC’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) thereafter will open more new doors for mutual cooperation and collaboration between NRCs and Caribbean Civil Society that will also hopefully see the movements against colonialism, neo-colonialism and modern slavery (in all their forms) gain better traction towards the genuine independence envisaged in CARICOM’s original TPP and the modified Manifesto.
These events also open the way for progressive review of the progress of the historical 2001 Durban Conference and Declaration and chart ways forward to consolidate the gains of the past quarter-century for People of African Descent worldwide.
Truly, the Caribbean has a much-better understanding today of what Emancipation was meant to be, vis-à-vis what it was taught to mean, by the hunters who’ve told the history of the hunted for the past 534 years since Christopher Columbus opened the way for European conquest, Native Genocide, Colonialism, Enslavement, Indentureship and other forms of neo-colonial and imperialist enslavement.
That he did with the blessings of the Vatican and its Doctrine of Discovery that blessed the invaders on ships with red crosses on their sails, bearing swords shaped like crosses and rosaries around their necks, to kill ‘In the name of the Father…’
The hunted have long started rewriting the history written by the hunters to emancipate the minds of the haunted from the shackles of Mental Slavery.
It’s now left to the global, regional and national Reparations movements to continue consolidating the gains of the past, to ensure a brighter future for not only the heirs and successors of the enslaved, but also for continuing Enlightenment of Humanity.