Keypoints:
- CARICOM puts youth at centre of reparations drive
- UWI expands reparations debates across secondary schools
- Jamaica opens separate legal route involving Britain
CARICOM has put young people and education at the centre of its renewed reparations drive, as the regional movement expands beyond diplomacy into public advocacy, education and greater participation by younger generations.
The shift comes as CARICOM governments intensify their pursuit of reparatory justice over African enslavement and colonialism, while Jamaica has opened a separate legal route involving King Charles and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Together, the developments show a wider effort to deepen the reparations debate across Caribbean society.
Youth moved to centre of campaign
Speaking at the Third CARICOM Regional Conference on Reparations in Barbados on September 17, CARICOM Secretary-General Carla Barnett said the voices of young people must ‘remain central’, adding that their participation was essential if reparatory justice was to become a ‘living instrument for transformation’.
CARICOM’s revised Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice, approved by regional leaders in July and relaunched at the conference, places education alongside public health, psychological rehabilitation, cultural development, support for Indigenous communities, gender justice, debt cancellation and monetary compensation.
Barnett also said CARICOM would take reparations onto the agenda of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua and Barbuda in November, declaring that regional ‘advocacy and activism’ would continue.
UWI takes debate into schools
A related education effort is already under way through The University of the West Indies’ Centre for Reparation Research, which says it supports CARICOM’s wider reparatory justice programme.
The Centre works with Caribbean high schools, develops educational programmes and says one of its objectives is to raise public awareness and support activism founded on reparatory justice.
Its 2026 International Reparation Debate Competition brought together 36 secondary schools from the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. Students debated questions involving historical accountability, economic justice, political strategy and the wider reparations movement.
The primary sources reviewed by Africa Briefing do not establish any region-wide compulsory programme requiring Caribbean schoolchildren to campaign against Britain. They document education, competitive debate, advocacy and youth participation around reparatory justice.
Jamaica opens separate legal front
The youth and education initiatives are developing alongside a separate legal and diplomatic campaign.
Jamaica on September 7 filed a petition asking King Charles, in his capacity as King of Jamaica, to refer questions about chattel slavery to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The government has stressed that the petition contains no monetary claim. It seeks consideration of whether slavery as practised in Jamaica was lawful under English law, whether international legal obligations were breached and whether Britain has a legal obligation to provide a reparatory remedy.
The move extends a legal strategy Africa Briefing has previously examined as Jamaica seeks to test longstanding arguments surrounding Britain’s responsibility for slavery.
Britain maintains that it will not pay financial reparations and argues that there is no legal duty to provide reparation for historical acts that were not violations of international law at the time, a position set out in the UK Parliament.
Africa-Caribbean alliance expands
CARICOM says cooperation with the African Union has strengthened its reparations strategy, pointing to the 2025 Africa-CARICOM summit and the UN General Assembly resolution adopted in March 2026 on the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans.
Africa Briefing has also tracked the expanding Africa-Caribbean diplomatic alliance on reparations and CARICOM’s engagement with Britain over slavery justice.
The emerging strategy therefore extends beyond compensation. It combines diplomacy, litigation, historical research, education and greater participation by younger generations, placing youth more visibly within a campaign CARICOM says it intends to carry forward at regional and international level.
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