By Kimberly Ramkhalawan
December 6, 2022.
The issue of reparations for the enslaved in the Caribbean goes deep, and with the winding down of the International Decade for people of African Decent in 2024, comes the inaugural permanent forum currently ongoing in Geneva, Switzerland.
Many people from the Caribbean are representing their indigenous groups and voicing their concerns at the forum calling for a collective stand globally against the issue of racism, and formal apologies along with issuing reparatory justice.
And one such Caribbean nation that came under the spotlight and the cry for reparations from European nations, was Haiti, and leading this chant was Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, daughter of Frantz Fanon who was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique, who questioned the real purpose of the forum, by saying she believes “it was a matter of trying to find the means to combat structural racism, and not systemic racism because the foundation of racism was rooted in the insulation of racism of people of African decent when nations are constructed on the hierarchy on white supremacy”. In paving the way for her argument, she said “it could not be forgotten the heritage this created”, something “the forum must base itself and root itself in that point of departure”. She referred to the example of Haiti, a country she says is dying before the eyes of the world, and added that the United Nations was only able to send armed forces. Mendes-France questioned what was done after 2011 post the earthquake, and said Haitians were not asking for military force to be sent, but reparations to be properly mobilized, from its colonizer, and that France reimburse the illegal debt which was enforced. This debt collected by France she chastised while in the same breath calling for the sovereignty of Haitian people to enjoy their proper rights, along with control over their food resources. And with continued US intervention, Mendes-France warned of Haiti becoming like a 53rd state of the Americas like Puerto Rico.
She called on the forum “not to simply get bogged down in a range of problems already well known in the working group”, topics she says she is all too familiar with having been present for decades hearing it talked about. Instead focus should be the reality before them in collective reparations, exercising their rights with a call on international solidarity, as nothing wont happen if this is repeated year after year. She added that she had been there for six years already, as an expert and has heard the same thing said, as they have been said, underscoring the need to get further, definitively defeating structural racism.
Reiterating the call as so many before has voiced, the need for Pan-Africanism, with collective people gathered together, united in their strength and calling for the right for reparation, to make reparations for the crimes against humanity that have been inflicted, genocide inflicted. However, she questioned the political will in participating in this, going as far as questioning the relationships in power.
Mendes-France narrowed in on the impact the United States’ politics of domination had on the rest of the world and as highlighted in the killing of American George Floyd. This example of police violence, she described as showing that truly not much had changed in the world, and served as a wakeup call for a Pan-African frame of mind and a call for progress on reparation.