“You cannot, truthfully, support an end to systemic racism if you are not willing to address the historic and continuing harmful legacies that post-colonial societies and people of African descent face today. And through a victim-centred and led reparatory justice approach,” said Gabrielle Hemmings, a doctoral student at the University of Birmingham who is currently doing research on reparatory justice initiatives in the Caribbean.

Hemmings describes herself as a Jamaican woman and academic activist “made by Jamaicans, for Jamaicans, in Jamaica.”

Makmid Kamara, founder and director of Reform Initiatives and a Sierra Leonean expert on reparatory justice, and democratic governance and advocacy, agreed with Hemmings.

“Former colonial powers and those who profited and benefitted from the enslavement of Africans [must] acknowledge their wrongdoings and apologize for their crimes,” he said. “They must undertake systemic and concrete measures geared towards racial repair.”

Hemmings and Kamara participated in an Enhanced Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Independent Expert Mechanism to Advance Racial Justice and Equality in Law Enforcement (EMLER), during the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.

History shapes the present

“Colonialism, enslavement, and the trade in enslaved Africans are not just grim chapters of our common history,” said UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk during the dialogue. “Their impact stretches into the present, fuelling inequalities and perpetuating systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent.”

For UN Human Rights, reparatory justice for legacies of the past is key to dismantling systemic racism, transforming the present and future for Africans and people of African descent, and responding meaningfully to long-standing calls for accountability and redress.

The UN Human Rights report presented at the dialogue highlights these points.

Consultations, predominantly with people of African descent,  have shown that demands — and their addressees — vary, for example, between North America, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean, where descendants of enslaved Africans reside; certain States in Africa, where calls focus on colonial legacies; and other contexts receiving less attention, such as the trade in enslaved Africans across the Indian Ocean, the report states.

Continuous consultations and context-specific measures are therefore key to meeting demands.

Kamara said that the need for reparatory justice has never been more pressing and that discussions and processes around reform of the current global systems and structures must take a reparatory justice lens. 

For Hemmings, the Caribbean is a prime example.

“While others inherit generational wealth, the Caribbean region has inherited generational poverty […] understaffed and underfunded healthcare systems [and] a patriarchal society that manifests in one of the highest rates of violence against women and girls in the world,” she said. “These contemporary Caribbean realities are rooted in chattel enslavement and colonialism.”

During the dialogue, Tracie Keesee, a member of EMLER, said that procedural shortcomings in criminal proceedings against African defendants and those of African descent are due to racial profiling, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, lack of legal representation and unfair convictions, amongst other reasons.

“Systemic racism is not an accident of today, but a direct legacy of colonialism and enslavement,” Keesee said.

In 2025, EMLER held public consultations on systemic racism in the criminal justice system, where 20 speakers — including directly affected individuals and civil society representatives — shared their experiences and perspectives.

During the dialogue, Türk said that systemic racism against Africans and people of African descent was built up over generations, and it can — and must — be torn down.

From recommendations to action

Showcasing advocacy in action, Kamara outlined what he calls the “LOP framework” for engaging governments on reparatory justice: listen to both affected communities and State actors, identify and align with mutual opportunities, and build respectful partnerships rather than adversarial relationships.

“Now the lessons that could be learned from that, from the global reparatory justice agenda, is for us to see the world as a global family,” Kamara said. “For us to even begin the process of repair, there needs to be acknowledgement.”

For Kamara, acknowledgement comes in the form of conversation. One in which perpetrators finally say, “We are perpetrators of these historical injustices. We need to acknowledge that yes, we committed crimes. What we did was wrong.”

“Reparatory justice is about exposing and coming to terms with the truth of our common history. Not erasing it, ignoring it or rewriting it,” Türk said.

Hemmings, also a former fellow of African descent, said that there are several misconceptions about reparatory justice. 

For Hemmings, calls for reparatory justice, in opposition to these misconceptions, are rooted in the unfair and unbalanced global and national systems, created by and through colonialism and chattel enslavement, and, therefore, rooted in and shaped by systemic racism.

Working for transformative change

“UN Human Rights plays a vital role in advancing the fight against systemic racism and can really help to show global support for reparatory justice demands,” Hemmings said.

Kamara welcomed the High Commissioner’s report and made a call to States to take the recommendations seriously and act on them urgently.

Türk also outlined the key elements of a comprehensive approach to reparatory justice, one grounded in international human rights law.

His report details a broad set of measures to address the legacies of the past and to honour the suffering, resilience, and dignity of victims — from formal apologies and truth-telling processes to memorialization, compensation, restitution, and medical and psychosocial support. It highlights examples of such efforts by States, as well as by museums, universities, religious institutions, and private companies. But as Türk emphasized, these are only first steps and much more remains to be done.

Kamara noted that reparatory justice is indeed a multi-sectoral, multi-layered and multi-faceted justice issue.

“This is why, as a movement, we support healing as a key component of the reparations process,” he said. “Because reparations without inter-racial and intra-racial healing is incomplete and is a recipe for trauma in perpetuity.”