All three candidates running to succeed Baroness Scotland as Secretary-General of the Commonwealth have backed the idea of making amends for slavery and colonialism. The Times has the story.
The fraught debate about reparations for slavery and colonialism is likely to dominate the King’s first meeting with Commonwealth leaders since he ascended the throne.
The organisation, which has 56 members, has long resisted tackling the legacy of slavery in a public forum but a reckoning with its roots in the British Empire seems unavoidable next month with the election of a new Secretary-General.
All three candidates running to succeed Baroness Scotland of Asthal have backed the idea of making amends for slavery and colonialism.
“I stand for reparations,” Shirley Botchwey, the Ghanaian Foreign Affairs Minister, told a debate at Chatham House in London this week between the all-African shortlist of candidates.
Joshua Setipa, a former Trade and Industry Minister in Lesotho, said that if elected he would not wait for member states to ask the Commonwealth to act.
Mamadou Tangara, a Gambian diplomat and politician, said he “fully” supported reparations and would want the Commonwealth to facilitate member state-led conversations.
The King is the ceremonial head of the Commonwealth, whose members include west African and Caribbean countries affected by the slave trade. About 10 million people were enslaved by Britain and European nations between the 15th and 19th centuries and sent to work on plantations across the Atlantic in the Caribbean and the Americas.
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