Transformative Justice, Reparations and Transatlantic Slavery

Article
Social & Legal Studies
2019, Vol. 28(2) 137–157
Transformative Justice,
ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663917746490
Transatlantic Slavery
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Matthew Evans
University of Sussex, UK; University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
David Wilkins
University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa
Abstract
This article considers lessons recent debates concerning transitional and transformative
justice, and surrounding transformative reparations, could offer to discussions regarding
reparations for transatlantic slavery. Even transitional justice programmes aiming to
provide transformative reparations in the form of development programmes (such as
healthcare, education and housing provision) have enabled governments to avoid
addressing structural causes of inequalities. The article argues that calling for reparations
for transatlantic slavery in the form of development projects is potentially regressive.
Framing development programmes as reparations, as parts of the Caribbean Community
Ten-Point Plan for reparations do, risks presenting these as necessary only because of
powerful states’ duty to make amends for past wrongdoing. The article calls for advo-
cates of reparations for transatlantic slavery to be more explicit in demarcating the
backward- and forward-looking foundations of their claims. The importance of symbolic
and non-financial reparations ought to be more explicitly highlighted as a potential
contributor to the social repair of transatlantic slavery’s harmful legacies. Moreover,
distributive justice should be explicitly emphasized as being necessary to realize the
present-day and future rights of people suffering from the historical legacy of transat-
lantic slavery and not simply because the present situation is the result of historical
injustice.
Corresponding author:
Matthew Evans, Sussex Law School, School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex, Falmer,
Brighton BN1 9QE, UK; Department of Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Wits 2050, South Africa.
Emails: matthew.evans@sussex.ac.uk; matthew.evans@wits.ac.za

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Social & Legal Studies 28(2)
Keywords
Caribbean Community, historical wrongs, human rights, reparations, transatlantic
slavery, transformative justice
Introduction
In 2014, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) proposed a Ten-Point Plan for repara-
tions to address the legacies of transatlantic slavery (Leigh Day, 2014). These claims call
for a variety of reparative symbolic, economic and political measures by European states
that instituted and benefitted from transatlantic slavery. Whilst there is much to support
with regard to the CARICOM claim and the historical analysis on which the claim rests,
it is nevertheless imperfect. Significantly, some of the ways the calls for reparations have
been framed have the unintended consequence of opening space for duty-bearing states
to attempt to deny their responsibilities in relation to addressing ongoing injustices.
Drawing particularly on the framework of transformative justice and debates over the
notion of transformative reparations, the article seeks to engage with some of the limita-
tions and shortcomings of the CARICOM claim with a view to identifying ways in which
some of these shortcomings might be overcome. The article does this in order to offer a
supportive yet provocative critique of the reparations claim. It seeks not to minimize or
discredit claims for justice for historical wrongs but instead hopes to advance the debate
about how this can best and most effectively be achieved. Furthermore, it is worth noting
that whilst the arguments and analysis advanced here specifically engage with the
CARICOM reparations claim, there are transferable lessons which could equally be
applied to other calls for reparations for slavery and for colonial wrongs.
First, the article outlines the debates over transformative justice and transformative
reparations, which are subsequently applied to analysis of the CARICOM claims.
Second, the historical and political background to the emergence of the CARICOM
Ten-Point Plan is briefly set out. Following this, the Ten-Point Plan itself is unpacked
and critically evaluated with regard to its historical claims, specific recommendations
and the ways in which these are framed politically. It is argued that the elements of the
Ten-Point Plan which specifically address conditions which are necessarily the result of
transatlantic slavery are largely unproblematic, whereas the claims which seek to address
unjust conditions which are contingently linked to transatlantic slavery ought to be
framed more in terms of the need for contemporary justice than in terms of undoing the
harms of slavery specifically. The article concludes that reparations movements could
strengthen their claims against wealthy and powerful actors by adopting a more radical,
less limited approach to understanding, explaining and framing their claims.
Transformative Justice and Transformative Reparations
Transitional justice mechanisms, particularly truth commissions, trials, and (at least
recommendations for) amnesties, reparations and institutional reform, are increasingly
mainstream in responses to periods of conflict, widespread atrocities or authoritarian
rule. Transformative justice, on the other hand, has emerged in recent years as a concept

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139
responding to and seeking to address some of the identified shortcomings of transitional
justice (see, for example, Daly, 2002; Evans, 2016; Gready and Robins, 2014). Broadly,
transitional justice processes have tended to focus on individual victims and perpetrators
of human rights abuses and, especially, on direct violations of bodily integrity (through
torture, killings and disappearances particularly). These amount to addressing a narrow
range of civil and political rights issues, whereas a focus on socioeconomic rights issues
and upon the structural and collective aspects of violence and oppression leads to a
different conception of victims and perpetrators as well as, potentially, different modes
of remedy for these harms (see, for example, Evans, 2016; Gready and Robins, 2014;
Mamdani, 1996). One of the shortcomings of transitional justice, though not one much
addressed in the research so far produced on transformative justice, is the question of
how injustices rooted in the deeper past than immediate periods of conflict or author-
itarianism might be addressed. Major criticisms have been levelled at transitional justice
mechanisms due to the limitations of being (perhaps necessarily) short-term, time-bound
interventions (Evans, 2016; Waldorf, 2012). Questions therefore remain over how those
issues which are outside the scope of transitional justice might be addressed. How, for
instance, should the legacies of transatlantic slavery be addressed? Much of the focus of
scholarship on transformative justice has been upon whether and how the concerns of
those affected by conflict and injustice, particularly the addressing of socioeconomic
rights issues, can be incorporated into policies and practices intended to address the
legacies of conflict and authoritarianism (Evans, 2016; Gready and Robins, 2014).
Gready and Robins argue that transformative justice is ‘transformative change that
emphasizes local agency and resources, the prioritization of process rather than precon-
ceived outcomes’ and which emphasizes ‘the challenging of unequal and intersecting
power relationships and structures of exclusion at both the local and the global level’
(2014: 340). This includes emphasizing the social, economic, collective and structural
aspects of conflict and oppression which have tended to be neglected (or at least
addressed secondarily) in mainstream conceptions of human rights practice and in tran-
sitional justice in particular (see, for example, Gready and Robins, 2014; Mamdani,
1996; Stammers, 2009: 8). A transformative justice approach, or at least elements of
it, might yield useful lessons for movements seeking to address the legacies of transat-
lantic slavery and other injustices rooted in the deeper past than those that transitional
justice has typically been concerned with.
A parallel debate to that surrounding the theorization and application of transfor-
mative justice concerns reparations specifically. On the one hand, reparations are
frequently recommended (if not actually delivered) as part of transitional justice pro-
grammes (Waldorf, 2012). On the other hand, the typical processes of reparations
programmes and the common forms of reparations, where they have been implemen-
ted, have been criticized (for an overview see, for example, Moffett, 2015). Advocates
of transformative reparations argue that narrow conceptions of what reparations ought
to be (for example, financial payments to individuals) or what they ought to be for (for
example, primarily symbolic) are insufficient. For reparations to be meaningful, or at
least for them to be meaningfully transformative, there needs to be a focus on both the
process and outcomes of reparations programmes. Moreover, reparations programmes
need to consider what the intended recipients want and need. Maria Saffon and Rodrigo

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Social & Legal Studies 28(2)
Uprimny argue that transformative reparations ‘conceives of reparations not only as a
form of corrective justice that seeks to deal with the suffering caused by atrocities, but
also as an opportunity...