"When Her Majesty the Queen spoke recently in Virginia at the commemoration of the founding of Jamestown, she unwittingly acknowledged that it is now time to repair the horrors of the crimes against Africans and the Sovereign Indigenous Nations of the Americas. Her slight acknowledgment of the past crimes is a reflection of the strength of the international movement for reparations.

Caribbean intellectuals, scholars, activists and leaders have been at the forefront of this call for reparations and it is now time in the period of the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade for the governments to step up and implement reparations where it counts - in the field of education.

Our governments must be pushed to take the lead in changing the curriculum of the Caribbean. This is not to suggest that material reparations are not important but to reinforce the fact that the lessons from the previous precedents of reparations show that reparations in a monetary form do not guarantee non repetition of the crimes against humanity. Western intellectual and philosophical Institutions (i.e. the educational systems, museum systems, research organizations etc.) have been among the primary sources of misinformation, intellectual theft, misappropriation and distortion of non-Western knowledge systems, the distortion and elimination of histories, the inculcation of destructive world-views, and the agents of legitimization for the oppressive slave order of the past.

The Caribbean must push for a follow-up of the WCAR resolutions and to pressure the UN to implement the Program of Action of the World Conference against Racism. This will be a fitting way ensure Global Dialogue on Reparations."

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