Jamaica Calls For Reparatory Justice At OAS Slavery Remembrance Commemoration

Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the Organization of American States (OAS), His Excellency Major General (Ret’d) Antony Anderson, has called on member states to move beyond solemn remembrance and deliver concrete reparatory action as the entity observed International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade on March 25.

Speaking at a meeting held at the OAS headquarters in Washington DC on Wednesday (March 25), Ambassador Anderson framed the transatlantic slave trade not as a distant historical footnote but as the structural foundation of inequality that continues to shape the Americas today.

The meeting was convened within the framework of the 9th Inter-American Week for People of African Descent in the Americas, under the theme ‘Equality that inspires, freedom that transforms, and a Hemisphere that leads’.

Ambassador Anderson noted that approximately one million Africans were forcibly transported to Jamaica between the seventeenth and early nineteenth centuries.

By the early 1800s, the island had become one of the largest slave societies in the British Caribbean, with an enslaved population exceeding 300,000 persons.

“These are not just numbers but human beings subjected to a system designed to extract labour, suppress identity, and deny dignity,” he stated.

Ambassador Anderson argued that while Emancipation in 1838 brought legal freedom, slavery’s legacy remains structurally embedded in the present day – evident in patterns of land ownership, persistent economic disparities, and enduring inequalities of access, opportunity, and representation across the hemisphere.

“Emancipation could not be legal alone; it had to be psychological, social, and economic as well,” he stated, citing the legacy of Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

Earlier in the week, Jamaica hosted a formal reflection on the legacy of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jamaica’s first National Hero, whose philosophy of self-reliance, economic empowerment, and Pan-African dignity was shaped directly by the historical experience of slavery and its aftermath.

“His vision extended beyond Jamaica and spoke to a broader hemispheric and global movement for dignity and self-determination among people of African descent,” the Ambassador stated.

He also called for equitable public policy, inclusive development, education reform, and “serious engagement with the question of reparatory justice”.

The OAS, he argued, has a critical institutional role to play.

Through initiatives such as the Inter-American Week for People of African Descent and its accompanying Plan of Action, the Organisation has created a framework for dialogue.

“Let us ensure that remembrance strengthens action, that recognition strengthens policy, and that the freedom for which our ancestors struggled is made more real in the lives of present and future generations,” Ambassador Anderson said.