Compensation.

 

Under international human rights law, compensation for any economically assessable damage, as appropriate and proportional to the gravity of the violation and the circumstances of each case, may also constitute a form of reparations (A/RES/60/147, annex, para. 20). In the context of historical wrongs and harms suffered as a result of colonialism and enslavement, the assessment of the economic damage can be extremely difficult owing to the length of time passed and the difficulty of identifying the perpetrators and victims (A/76/180, paras. 57 and 59, and A/HRC/47/53, para. 60).

The Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation andguarantees of non-recurrence and CARICOM have also suggested that debt cancellation for the former colonies may be a possible form of compensation for the legacies of enslavement and colonialism. At the national level, attempts to seek compensation, including through domestic litigation procedures, have mostly failed to date (A/HRC/47/CRP.1, para. 278). Yet in some cases, local authorities have paid reparations to the victims of past atrocities and discriminatory policies. For instance, in the United States the Evanston city council passed a funded reparations programme in 2019 for the victims of the city’s past discriminatory housing policies (Ibid., para. 275). Another initiative is the Florida House Bill 591 of 1994 to compensate survivors of the 1923 Rosewood Massacre by way of damages and tuition scholarships (Ibid., para. 276). While such local initiatives are significant and commendable, they fall far short of a comprehensive State response