Africa Reparation Database

Permanent URI for this community

http://hdl.handle.net/11660/12815

This community is being populated.

The UFS Africa Reparations Hub (UFSARH) constitutes itself as a premier legal, academic and transdisciplinary forum to adhere and consolidate the presently fragmented African reparations narrative. UFSCAR anchors and reinforces the Africa Reparations Agenda of the African Union. UFSCAR supports the increased reparations awareness and activism of African government, non-government, civil society and individual actors through grounding relevant political, diplomatic, normative and academic activities and initiatives. UFSARH provides a Pan-African centre for Africa reparations research, teaching, policy and advocacy. UFSARH is a national, regional and international centre for prosecuting, promoting and facilitating Pan-African led and sustained reparations scholarship, policy and advocacy. UFSARH convenes the UFSARH Panel of Experts on Africa Reparations (PEAR).

Click here for more information

Faculty Contact:

T: +27 51 401 2451

E: law@ufs.ac.za

Browse

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Open Access
The African reparation cry: rationale, estimate, prospects and strategies
(SAGE Publications, 2000) Osabu-Kle, Daniel Tetteh
Given that some societies of the human race have been granted reparation, payment of reparation to people of African descent (hereafter referred to as Africans or Diaspora) may be considered long overdue. Descendants of African slaves in the United States have raised their voices about reparation they are legally entitled to but have been denied for more than a century. 1 Under the guidance of Dr. Robert Block, African Americans have gone further to demand exemption from “US taxes and racial discriminatory laws.” 2 The cry for reparation for continental Africans has been going on secretly among concerned members of the Diaspora for decades, but in recent years, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and concerned heads of states of Africa have raised their voices openly. In December 1990, an international conference on reparations in Nigeria succeeded in setting up an International Committee for Reparation (ICR). The ICR convinced the OAU to regard the reparation issue as one of the most important items on its agenda.
Open Access
Reparation: a sourcebook for victims of torture and other violations of human rights and international humanitarian law
(The Redress Trust, 2003) Echeverria, Gabriela; Ferstman, Carla
The Redress Trust has a very particular focus – we work with survivors of torture, and we try to assist them in their search for all forms of justice, and to ensure that their rights are recognised before national and international jurisdictions. Obtaining justice and other forms of reparation for torture and other international crimes is exceedingly difficult. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, these crimes normally imply and often require a certain level of State involvement. To obtain justice and redress implies that the State acknowledges responsibility and makes amends. In many instances, often for the very purpose of avoiding justice, there have been amnesty laws, shielding these crimes from prosecution. Often the perpetrators are supported by the States who should be punishing them; sometimes the perpetrators are even State officials. Sometimes the perpetrators flee their countries, and their country of exile has no interest to bring them to justice.
Open Access
Reparations to Africa: examining the African viewpoint
(MacSphere, 2004) Lombardo, Anthony Peter
This thesis explores African opinion on Western reparations to Africa and investigates the prospects and challenges facing a social movement for African reparations. The findings are based on an analysis of 41 semi-structured interviews conducted with, for the most part, African human rights activists, academics, ambassadors to the USA and three members of the Group of Eminent Persons, mandated to advocate reparations to Africa. Respondents were asked about their personal feelings towards reparations and the "West," and about what shape reparations should take. Key themes from the interviews demonstrated a strong desire for "rehabilitative" reparations beyond merely words of apology or acknowledgement. From these results, concepts from existing reparations theory and frameworks are tested and expanded. An investigation of the advocacy literature demonstrates that advocates for reparations to Africa will face a number of challenges with respect to political opportunities, mobilization and framing for a successful social movement for reparations.
Open Access
Therapeutic jurisprudence: judicial officers and the victim's welfare - S v M 2007 (2) SACR 60 (W): comments
(University of Pretoria, 2007) Van Der Merwe, Annette
South African judicial officers have adopted, but only to an extent, the concept of restorative justice (A Skelton and M Batley 'Restorative justice: a contemporary South African review' 2008 Acta Criminologica 42, 49; cf SS Terblanche Guide to sentencing in South Africa (2007) 177 and S v Maluleke 2008 (1) SACR 49 (T)). This aims to hold offenders accountable in a meaningful way while addressing the needs of victims and the larger community.
Metadata only
Peremptory norms as an aspect of constitutionalisation in the international legal system
(Hague Academic Press, 2009) Orakhelashvili, Alexander
The phenomenon of constitutionalisation occupies increasing place in the discourse on international law, even though the international legal system contains no formal and express constitutional arrangement. The two basic features of constitution are that it regulates the issues of basic importance for the relevant community, and it prevails over ordinary laws. The phenomenon of peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens) satisfies both these requirements. The ground covered by jus cogens relates to the area of interests of the international community as a whole, safeguarding which is the concern for all. It is also a natural function of jus cogens to prevail over ordinary norms of international law. Thus, whether or not jus cogens is part of constitution of the international society, it performs the functions of it, compatibly with its other principal function as public order (public policy) of the international society. The expressions of this constitutional element relate to the possibilities of invoking its primacy over ordinary laws in international and national courts, on matters such as the immunity of States or the powers of international organizations. The interaction between the powers of the UN Security Council and jus cogens demonstrates how the original public policy aspect of jus cogens - its non-derogability - could generate the classical constitutional supremacy over treaty-based institutional arrangements.
Open Access
Reaching for Justice: The Right to Reparation in the African Human Rights System
(Redress, 2013) Organisation
The report explains how regional human rights mechanisms, in particular the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, play a key part in upholding the rights of victims, including the right to reparation. The report finds that while significant progress has been made, more could be done to ensure “a holistic, victim-centered approach on reparation for victims of gross human rights violations in Africa”.
Open Access
Reparations for slavery and the slave trade: a transnational and comparative history
(Bloomsbury Academic Publishing, 2017) Araujo, Ana Lucia
This is the first book to present a narrative history of the demands of financial, material, and symbolic reparations for slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. It explores a myriad of written primary sources in several languages, including abolitionist pamphlets, parliamentary debates, petitions by former slaves, newspaper articles, congressional bills, as well as public discourses by black activists and politicians in Europe, Africa, and the Americas. The book draws from a transnational approach, associating social and cultural history, in order to grasp a transatlantic system that interconnected three continents for more than three hundred years. The various chapters examine the multiple dimensions of the demands of financial, material, and symbolic reparations, including the period of slavery, the emancipation era, the postabolition period, and the present.
Open Access
Gender and Transitional Justice
(International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), 2018) Muddell, Kelli; Hawkins, Sibley
Reparative justice measures seek to repair, in some way, the harm done to victims as a result of human rights violations committed against them. This means that by their very nature, such measures must be responsive to both the context in question and the lived reality of victims. Gender sensitivity is also an integral part of reparative justice because the consequences of human rights violations in victims’ lives are often inextricably linked with victims’ gender. Even when women and men suffer the same human rights abuses, the harms associated with these violations, and victims’ corresponding needs and priorities, may be different. In contexts of widespread violations of human rights, women often find themselves in situations of greater vulnerability than men because of the economic and social inequalities they face even during peacetime. Moreover, shame and stigma associated with certain crimes, such as sexual violence, can create obstacles for victims to receive accountability, truth, and redress. This is true for all victims of sexual and gender-based violence, not only women. In fact, male victims may have an even harder time accessing reparations for sexual violence crimes because it is often assumed that women are the only victims. Because of these dynamics, reparative justice measures must be designed to address the genderspecific harms faced by victims, align with their needs and priorities, and make sense for victims given their day-to-day realities. Reparations should reflect the nature of the violations and the genderspecific consequences that result. Unsurprisingly, past reparations programs have not always done this.
Open Access
Reparative Justice at international and hybrid criminal tribunals (Chapter 2)
(Cambridge University Press, 2020) Cohen, Miriam
Chapter 2 dwells upon the operationalization of the reparative dimension of international criminal justice at the international level, with a focus on the historical evolution of reparations by international criminal courts and tribunals prior to the ICC, and the reparative justice model devised by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The goal of this chapter is to retrace the diverse models in place in international criminal tribunals in regards to reparations, from a model that excludes reparations from criminal proceedings to one that has a role for victims and encompasses reparative dimensions of justice. Concerning the latter, this chapter analyzes in-depth the reparation regime developed at the ECCC, including the role of parties civiles, and the rich developing case law of the court regarding reparations. This chapter provides a careful analysis of all decisions on reparations and submissions of the parties, it engages with critical scholarship on the system developed at the ECCC, the impact of reparation orders for victims and discusses practical and policy considerations of the types of reparation that can be ordered (collective and moral reparations). It also analyses the partie civile system under which the ECCC operates and discusses the contribution of the evolving case law to the development of reparative justice for international crimes.
Open Access
The reality of reparations: an exploration of neo-colonialism, morality and control in the Caribbean
(Caribbean Studies Students' Union, 2021) Khan, Amna
Reparations are widely understood as the process by which compensation is given or amends made for previous wrongdoing. In the context of the Caribbean, it may refer to official actions taken by former colonial powers to acknowledge and recompense states affected by colonialism and slavery. This paper seeks to analyse discussions of reparations in the region and consider how the lack of com- pensation may be perceived as demonstrating that modern power relations are merely repackaged propagations of imperialism. Fundamentally, this paper argues that the notion that colonisation was left behind in the 19th century with the abolition of slavery or mid-20th Century with the political indepen- dence of Caribbean nation-states is a facade and uses reparations discourse as the foremost example of such. This is demonstrated through the following questions: Why do reparations need to be paid? Why are they not being paid? And What needs to change?
Open Access
The overlooked victim right: according victim-survivors a right of access to restorative justice
(Denver Law Review Forum, 2021) Branham, Lynn S.
In recent years, states have accorded victim-survivors more expansive legal rights and made it easier for them to invoke those rights. Conspicuously absent from the litany of victims’ rights enumerated in the law is the right to be afforded access to restorative justice processes. This Article challenges this systemic failure to understand and respond to the full spectrum of victim-survivors’ needs. First, the Article provides three examples of core needs of victim-survivors that are largely disregarded by criminal justice systems and profiles how restorative justice equips criminal justice systems to better meet those needs. The Article then spotlights pertinent research confirming the benefits that redound to victim-survivors who participate in restorative processes. The Article concludes with a call for the law to accord victim-survivors a new right—a right of access to restorative justice processes—the need for which criminal justice systems have overlooked for far too long.
Open Access
The question of reparations to post-colonial states
(Old Dominion University, 2022) Dunham, Anna; Shinard, Vera
The discussion of reparations for post-colonial states is on the rise. Member States that experienced colonial rule are asking for some form of compensation for the violence and suffering of colonial conquest and rule, which they describe as the biggest injustice of the world. Reparations has emerged as a major issue in the United Nations, where more than two-thirds of the 193 Member States are former colonial territories. Some former colonial Member States demand reparations to rectify the consequences of past conquest and prejudice against individuals, groups or entire countries today. Colonialism, which dominated the modern era, resulted in brutal injustices against colonized peoples. Today these actions are described by many victims as Crimes against Humanity. Although colonialism ended in most of the world almost 50 years ago, its impact is still felt today in racist attitudes against descendants of colonized peoples and the poverty and underdevelopment endemic in many postcolonial states.
Open Access
The apartheid and racism campaigns - the NGO contribution to antisemitism
(Taylor & Francis Group, 2023) Steinberg, Gerald M.
Under the headings of promoting human rights and international law, the influential network of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has been a central actor in the political war targeting Israel though allegations of apartheid and racism. In applying these slanders, the NGOs systematically erase the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, including decades of warfare and terrorism, and join in the attempt to delegitimize the nation-state of the Jewish people, regardless of borders, and as distinct from criticism of Israeli policies regarding territory occupied in the 1967 war. This process constitutes the essence of post-Holocaust or ‘new antisemitism’, as included in the consensus working definition published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The NGO campaigns are constructed on the foundations established by the Soviet and Islamic blocs culminating in the 1975 UN ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution. This theme was revived in the NGO Forum of the 2001 Durban Conference, led by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Palestinian groups such as Al-Haq, and used to justify appropriating the methods of the South African anti-apartheid campaign, including boycotts and lawfare. After the Durban conference and for 20 years since, this NGO network continued and expanded the campaign based on the apartheid and racism allegations. Their claims were amplified in media platforms, international bodies, anti-Israel church groups and on university campuses in the form of ‘Israel apartheid weeks’. European governments enabled activities of the Palestinian and Israeli NGOs through substantial funding, estimated at 120 million Euros annually. In 2020 and 2021, the NGO emphasis on these themes increased, led by HRW, and supporting the decision of the ICC prosecutor to accept jurisdiction over Palestinian claims and to open investigations against Israel. This context amplified the potency of the allegations of apartheid and racism in attempts to demonise Israel.
Open Access
Black Justice, White Fear: when Reparations are framed as Genocide
(Self-Published on 𝘚𝘶𝘣𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘬, 2025) Mickens, Jasmine
This month, in an unprecedented move in U.S. refugee policy, the United States granted refugee status to Afrikaners on the grounds that the white minority in South Africa is facing racial persecution—even genocide. American officials welcomed the first wave of at least 49—citing claims that they are, “being brutally killed,” and “their land confiscated.” This narrative is unsubstantiated, historically dishonest, and morally corrosive. Let’s be clear: There is no campaign of extermination against Afrikaners. There are no mass land seizures. There is no humanitarian crisis. What exists is a shared vulnerability to crime that affects both Black and White rural South African farmers—driven by geography, poverty, and policing gaps, not race. There is unfinished business of South Africa’s democratic transition that left land reform untouched. The South African government finally seeks to correct what colonial conquest and apartheid codified: the violent dispossession of land that engineered Black landlessness into a permanent system of poverty and racial capitalism. There is a growing, global discomfort among formerly unassailable white communities whose inherited privileges are finally—symbolically more than materially—being named, questioned, and historicized. And there is a symbolic shift among conscious African youth—moving the ideological center of gravity toward justice, repair, and Black political self-determination. That shift alone has proven intolerable to some.

Browse

Browsing Africa Reparation Database by Issue Date

Results Per Page

Sort Options