THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT principle of “Leaving No-One Behind”– a principle that the UN applies to several categories of persons– is ALSO one of the fundamental principles of our REPARATIONS CAMPAIGN.
This is how I expressed it in my treatise entitled THE REPARATIONS MANIFESTO : –
“No One Must Be Left Behind” :
A fundamental objective of the Reparations campaign must be to ensure that no African-descendant is left behind in a slavery-like condition of poverty and powerlessness !
You see, our enslaved African ancestors were all brought to the so-called “New World” against their Will in the hold of a slave ship, as an undifferentiated human collective, and were all deposited at the very bottom of a structure of exploitation and dispossession.
They all therefore shared a common predicament, and engaged in a common struggle to survive and to extricate themselves from the imposed condition.
And over the years some of us have been more fortunate than others and have managed to remove ourselves from the bottom, slavery-like conditions of the prevailing social order.
But, there are still many of us who continue to exist in slavery-like conditions of inter-generational poverty.
And so, our resolve must be to NOT leave any black sister or brother behind in such a condition.
The fundamental mission of the Reparations campaign must therefore be to provide resources, mechanisms and programmes that reach out to every sister and brother who still finds herself or himself in a slavery-like condition of poverty, and to lift him or her out of that mire.
Like every good kinship group or Army platoon we must be resolved not to leave any member of our fraternity behind.”
THIS WEEK at the UN there will be several High Level events at which the SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT agenda will be discussed, inclusive of the “UN High-Level Political Forum On Sustainable Development”.
What a wonderful opportunity this presents to explain to the World that CARICOM’S REPARATIONS CAMPAIGN is designed to achieve sustainable development for a people who were not only systematically exploited and disadvantaged, but also a people from whom immense wealth was brutally extracted and used to construct the wealthiest and most powerful societies that exist in the World today.
David Comissiong
Barbados’ Ambassador to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM