Michelle Bachelet, the former President of Chile and current High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations (UN), has called for reparations for slavery and discrimination against people of African descent.
She was speaking after the release of a report by the UN Human Rights Council which said that reparations needed to be paid to make ‘amends’ to people of African descent.
The report cited concerns around racism in 60 countries, mainly in the Americas and Europe, and said that racism was a concern in countries with a history of African slavery.
The report said: ‘make amends for centuries of violence and discrimination… including through formal acknowledgment and apologies, truth-telling processes, and reparations in various forms.’ It also called for support and funding to be given to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Bachelet also said reparations should not only be financial. The BBC quoted her as saying: ‘States must show stronger political will to accelerate action for racial justice, redress and equality through specific, time-bound commitments to achieve results. This will involve reimagining policing, and reforming the criminal justice system, which have consistently produced discriminatory outcomes for people of African descent.’
Image: Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons