Palm Springs approves settlement for displaced Black and Latino families after decades-long fight for compensation
The Palm Springs city council on Thursday unanimously approved a $5.9m reparations settlement with former residents of a largely Black neighborhood that was leveled in the 1960s for commercial development.
The city council was also set to approve another $21m for housing and small business support aimed at the former residents and their descendants.
Continue reading...The international criminal court awarded a record €52.4m to survivors of Dominic Ongwen’s crimes but member states have failed to contribute
Not a single country has contributed towards reparations for the victims and survivors of the Ugandan warlord Dominic Ongwen, despite the international criminal court awarding €52.4m (£44m) in February, according to the ICC Trust Fund for Victims (TFV).
The ICC reparations order – the largest in the court’s history – was issued after a 2021 ruling in which the court found Ongwen, a former commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army militia group, guilty of various war crimes committed between 2002 and 2005, including murder, torture, sexual enslavement, the conscription of children into hostilities, and brutal attacks on four camps for internally displaced people in northern Uganda.
Continue reading...Tory leadership candidate wades into reparations debate, arguing empire brought democratic institutions
Britain’s former colonies should be thankful for the legacy of empire, not demanding reparations, according to the Conservative leadership candidate Robert Jenrick.
In comments that were described by a Labour MP as “deeply offensive”, the former minister said countries that were part of the empire “owe us a debt of gratitude for the inheritance we left them” in the form of legal and democratic institutions.
Continue reading...UK government stresses it does not pay reparations and said before Chogm summit that issue was not on agenda
Commonwealth leaders have resolved that “the time has come” for a conversation on reparatory justice despite the UK’s insistence that the issue was not on their agenda.
The language, agreed at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting (Chogm) on Saturday, is a blow to the UK, which wanted to avoid reparatory justice being mentioned.
Continue reading...Ghana’s foreign minister since 2017, Botchwey supports calls for reparations for transatlantic slavery and colonialism
Commonwealth members have appointed Ghana’s foreign minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, as the new secretary general, on the final day of the group’s summit in Samoa.
Botchwey, a former lawmaker who has served as Ghana’s foreign minister since 2017, has supported calls for reparations for transatlantic slavery and colonialism – a position that was also shared by the two other candidates who had vied for the position.
Continue reading...PM hinted at tax rises for those who earn income from shares and property, saying they did not fit his definition of ‘working people’
Downing Street is blocking moves to include a ban on smoking outdoors in the upcoming Tobacco and Vapes bill amid fierce opposition by the hospitality trade.
No 10 officials privately believe that banning people from lighting up in pub gardens is “an unserious” policy and is not backed by good evidence showing that it harms non-smokers.
Continue reading...Former chancellor says ‘increasing borrowing means interest rates would be higher for longer’ as Reeves says it will ‘make space for investment’
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, has said that “no one knows” who Robert Jenrick, the Tory leadership contender, is.
Of the two candidates left in the contest, Jenrick is the one who is doing most to appeal to Tories who defected to Reform UK, because he is saying Britain should leave the European convention on human rights.
I know the fella. Is he the chap that one day was on the very much on the left of the Conservative party and is now on the right of the Conservative Party?... No one knows who he is.
I’m sure government can agree that support and providing opportunities for young people should be central to the policy of any government. We are glad to see the government working to build closer economic and cultural ties with Europe. We want to forge a new partnership with our European neighbours, built on cooperation, not confrontation and move to a new comprehensive agreement.
We must build rebuild confidence through seeking to agree partnerships or associations helping to restore prosperity and opportunities for British people.
We are not going to give a running commentary on the negotiations. We will obviously look at EU proposals on a range of issues, but we are clear that we will not return to freedom of movement.
Continue reading...Call from head of Caribbean reparations body comes as Bahamas foreign minister claims UK PM will change his position
Britain has a legal and moral case to answer over its historical role in slavery, the chair of the Caribbean’s slavery reparation commission has said, as Keir Starmer continues to reject calls to put the issue on the agenda at the Commonwealth summit.
Responding to the British prime minister’s insistence to “look forward” rather than have “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past” when he meets 55 other country leaders on Friday, the distinguished Caribbean historian Sir Hilary Beckles, who chairs the Caribbean governments’ reparations body, articulated the region’s call to the British government and institutions to “engage in a compassionate, intergenerational strategy to support postcolonial reconstruction”.
Continue reading...UK prime minister would rather work with nations on ‘future-facing challenges’ at Commonwealth summit
Keir Starmer has insisted he wants to “look forward” rather than have “very long endless discussions about reparations on the past” in his first comments on the issue before the Commonwealth summit.
The prime minister is under pressure to discuss reparatory justice with Commonwealth countries, most of which are former UK colonies, in Samoa this week.
Continue reading...Analysis from business and trade department says bill will significantly strengthen workers’ right. This live blog is closed
In the past the weirdest budget tradition was the convention that the chancellor is allowed to drink alcohol while delivering the budget speech. But since no chancellor has taken advantage of the rule since the 1990s (and no one expects Rachel Reeves to be quaffing on Wednesday week), this tradition is probably best viewed as lapsed.
But Sam Coates from Sky News has discovered another weird budget ritual. On his Politics at Jack and Sam’s podcast, he says:
Someone messaged me to say: ‘Did you know that over in the Treasury as they’ve been going over all these spending settlements, in one of the offices, its full of balloons. And every time an individual department finalises its settlements, one of the balloons is popped.’
There couldn’t be a more important time for us to have this conversation.
The NHS is going through what is objectively the worst crisis in its history, whether it’s people struggling to get access to their GP, dialling 999 and an ambulance not arriving in time, turning up to A&E departments and waiting far too long, sometimes on trolleys in corridors, or going through the ordeal of knowing that you’re waiting for a diagnosis that could be the difference between life and death.
We feel really strongly that the best ideas aren’t going to come from politicians in Whitehall.
They’re going to come from staff working right across the country and, crucially, patients, because our experiences as patients are also really important to understanding what the future of the NHS needs to be and what it could be with the right ideas.
Continue reading...José Maria Neves says governments should still try to have such conversations and build solutions using diplomatic corridors
Cape Verde’s president, José Maria Neves, said the rise of rightwing populism has made it difficult to hold a serious debate about colonial reparations but argued that should not stop governments from having those conversations behind closed doors.
In an interview with the news site Brasil Já, published on Wednesday, Neves said debating reparations in the “public arena” could lead to more political polarisation in countries such as Cape Verde’s former coloniser, Portugal, where the far right is on the rise.
Continue reading...As new exhibition opens in Amsterdam exploring the settlement of North America, original Manhattanites demand apology
Representatives for some of the Lenape people have called for an apology and reparations for the 17th-century Dutch “settling” of New Amsterdam, the place that is now New York.
Precisely four centuries after the Dutch established a colony at the mouth of the Hudson River, some descendants of Indigenous Americans believe it is time for a fuller story of the wars on their people, slavery, exploitation and dispersal.
Continue reading...Government U-turn as PM Mia Mottley acknowledges anger from reparations movement over plan to buy Barbados land from Dorset MP Richard Drax
The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has halted plans for a multi-million-pound payout to the British Conservative MP Richard Drax for the purchase of 53 acres of the Drax Hall plantation, which he owns.
As revealed in the Observer last Sunday, the payout plan had angered those involved in the Caribbean reparations movement, who said Drax, the MP for South Dorset, should hand over all or part of the 617-acre plantation to the people of Barbados.
Continue reading...Caribbean historians want Richard Drax to pay reparations – but now Barbados plans to buy his land for homes
The Conservative MP under fire for his ancestors’ role in Caribbean slavery is in line for a multimillion-pound payout from the Barbados government.
Despite threats to make Richard Drax pay reparations and seize his family’s plantation – described by one historian as a “killing field” of enslaved Africans – the government is now planning to pay market value for 21 hectares (about 15 football pitches) of his land for housing.
Continue reading...Coalition of civil society groups says Paris should return harsh reparations imposed on Caribbean state two hundred years ago
France should repay billions of dollars to Haiti to cover a debt formerly enslaved people were forced to pay in return for recognising the island’s independence, according to a coalition of civil society groups that is launching a new push for reparations.
The Caribbean island state became the first in the region to win its independence in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. But in a move that many Haitians blame for two centuries of turmoil, France later imposed harsh reparations for lost income and that debt was only fully repaid in 1947.
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