This event is part of a series of activities marking this year's African Union (AU) theme of the year.
June 2-3, 2025 - Pretoria, South Africa
As the African Union declares 2025 the "Year of Reparations" under the theme "Advancing Justice through Reparations: Reparations, Restoration, and Renaissance," global attention is squarely on addressing historical injustices. African Futures Lab is proud to announce its participation in the hybrid conference: Justice through Reparations: African-Caribbean Dialogue, (external link) taking place at the University of Pretoria's Future Africa Campus in South Africa.
This two-day event, organized by leading academic institutions and civil society groups including the University of The Bahamas, the University of Pretoria, and the African Judges and Jurists Forum, convened experts and stakeholders from across Africa and the Caribbean. It aimed to deeply explore reparations for historical injustices and human rights violations stemming from slavery, colonialism, and other forms of exploitation against people of African descent.
Our Climate Research and Policy Advisor, Dr. Patrick Toussaint (external link), contributed to this critical discourse, presenting online alongside Krishnee Appadoo (external link), Senior Lecturer at the University of Mauritius (in person). They spoke as part of a panel on "Reparations and health, the environment, and the climate." Their joint paper, titled "Climate reparations and the continuing legacies of colonial harm: developing a Pan-African research and policy agenda," advocates for a Pan-African research and policy agenda that centers historical and structural injustices, confronts the sidelining of historical responsibility in global climate debates, and stresses that we should not overlook the transformative potential of climate reparations as part of African reparations discourses.
The communiqué from the conference can be accessed here (external link).
Watch this excerpt from Patrick's presentation - we look forward to sharing the full paper once it is finalized.
