3071-The political economy of new slavery

244 Slavery as Piracy
quantum. A sum too small would be an insult and a sum too large
would be unpayable.
Reparations for the slave trade provide an opportunity for a flexible,
dynamic approach. There is likely to be very little reliance on individual
claims. Indeed the nature of the reparations claim for the slave trade is
the opposite of the individual claim. It is to restore dignity to groups
and to acknowledge a mass wrongdoing and illegality.
The awards could be divided into three. First, those directed towards
states as debt relief payments, paid directly to the state; second, those
achieved through the lifting of specific trade barriers; and third, payments
aimed at civil society groups focusing on social entitlements such
as education and health. Reparations also address the barriers to enjoyment
of human rights, promoting the survival and participation of
groups who were once at risk of perishing. In this sense reparations are
transformative.
The discussions surrounding both debt relief and the lifting of trade
barriers would take on a completely different hue. Reparations for the
slave trade also provide an opportunity to create a tool to address
ongoing issues of inequality between developing and industrialized
states. This does raise the question of whether the compensation culture
is being used to replace a more equitable international order but it is not
a question of either/or. In the past the linking of debt relief to poverty
reduction and the lifting of trade barriers have often erroneously been
perceived as goodwill in response to special pleading by African
states. Arguably some of the debts owe their origin to remedying an
impoverishment to which the slave trade may have contributed. Such
an approach is supported by international human rights law. In a case
against Surinam under the Inter-American Convention on Human
Rights, the Aloeboetoe case, which is particularly apposite because of
the difficulty in identifying the victim’s descendants, the Court ordered
the creation of trust funds and the reopening and staffing of a school. 19
Hence compensation does not have to be considered within a narrow
context. The carefully targeted cancellation of debt and the lifting of
punitive trade barriers are therefore not issues only of relief but become
facets of compensation and therefore of justice.
The need for an international charter for reparations for the
slave trade
Individual states could make reparations on an individual basis for the
slave trade following the examples of the United States with regard to