The double liability problem is most vivid in the case of individuals with dual national heritage where both nations participated in the slave trade. A person with one British parent and one Portuguese parent, under the reparations logic, carries liability from both lines of descent. A person with one British parent and one French parent faces the same problem. There is no mechanism for resolving these competing claims.
But the problem extends beyond individuals to the institutional level. Which nation’s levy do you pay if you hold dual nationality? Who arbitrates if a claimant nation tries to collect from someone claiming exemption under another nation’s rules? The absence of any international legal framework for these questions is not an oversight. It is a symptom of the fact that the reparations proposal has never been developed into anything approaching a serious legal or policy instrument.
