Point 3 of CARICOM’s ten-point reparations plan calls for a programme of repatriation, funded by European governments, to resettle Caribbean descendants of enslaved people in Africa. CARICOM frames this as a right of return, arguing that enslaved people were stolen from their homelands and their descendants have a legal and moral right to be returned there at European expense.
It sounds plausible as an expression of cultural connection. Many people of African descent do feel a strong connection to the continent their ancestors came from, and some choose to move there. This is entirely understandable and legitimate.
The proposal collapses when examined seriously.
The first problem is consent. A repatriation programme funded by European governments would presumably be voluntary. If it is voluntary, it is simply a subsidy for people who want to move to Africa, which raises its own questions. If it is not voluntary, it is forced removal, which would be a human rights catastrophe far worse than the original wrong it claims to address. CARICOM does not specify which it means.
The second problem is destination. Africa is a continent of 54 countries and over a billion people. Caribbean people of African descent have ancestry from many different parts of West Africa, often mixed across generations of enslavement and migration. There is no specific country, region, or community that they are being returned to. CARICOM says it has been in contact with African states willing to accept returnees, but the logistics of identifying who goes where, and on what basis, have never been addressed.
The third problem is the standing of African governments in this claim. If Caribbean people have a right to return to Africa, that right is a claim against the African kingdoms that sold their ancestors to European traders in the first place, as much as it is a claim against the European states that bought them. Several of the African governments most sympathetic to the reparations movement are the successors of those kingdoms. The moral complexity of this is never acknowledged.
The fourth problem is the implicit insult. The proposal treats Caribbean people as displaced Africans who belong somewhere else, rather than as Caribbean people with a full claim to the places where their families have lived for generations. Caribbean identity is Caribbean, not a lesser version of an African identity waiting to be reclaimed.
The one-line rebuttal: CARICOM’s repatriation plan has never addressed who goes where, on what terms, or how the moral standing of African governments in such a claim would be established.
