INAPP Campaign Statement - Reparations Given the seriousness of our local, national and global predicament as Afrikan peoples iNAPP has prioritised reparations as an overarching theme and is the lens through which we approach and direct all our analysis, advocacy, campaigning and organising work. We adopt the Chinweizu definition of reparations that was advanced by Professor Chinweizu in his Reparations and A New Global Order: A Comparative Overview, a paper presented at the second Plenary Session of the ‘First Pan-African Conference on Reparations,’ Abuja, Nigeria, on April 27, 1993 which essentially defines reparations as efforts to ‘repair damage;’ as well as transformation, restoration and renewal of a people or group that has experienced crimes against humanity, genocide or war crimes and continuing violations of their human and peoples’ rights. Our emphasis is on reparations not just as a legal case or claim or indeed a political struggle, but also as a social movement. For reparations will be effected and secured as a result of a movement that we continue to build. This speaks to the issue of mobilising and building people based power, knowledge and influence to bring about the reparations objectives we desire. • We start from the premise that no single organisation can claim it represents all interests groups within and beyond UK, let alone Europe on the issue of reparations. • We in the iNAPP are inviting all Afrikans to work together with us in harmonising our various positions, perspectives and operations on reparations through the iNAPP. • In this regard, the iNAPP Legal & Constitutional Sub-committee is leading on iNAPP’s reparations campaigning and organising work and has two main mechanisms for doing so; the Community Law Circle and its Reparations Task Action Group. The reparations work of the iNAPP Legal & Constitutional Sub-committee on reparations focuses on: 1. Promoting reparations legal literacy and providing law-related education on reparations as an accompaniment to reparations organising and mobilisation; 2. Raising legal consciousness and building legal capability to understand/overstand, promote and advance the Global Afrikan or Pan-Afrikan Reparations case within and beyond the UK; 3. Assessing all reparations cases or claims against what we have already articulated in the UK as a Global Afrikan claim. An essential aspect of this claim includes cessation of human and peoples’ rights violations which means challenging the crimes and harms of neo-colonialism and those found to be facilitators of it in Afrika, the Caribbean and other countries in the Afrikan Diaspora whether at the level of government or civil society; 4. Correcting erroneous assumptions that the settlement achieved in the case of Mutua and Ors v FCO (Mau Mau case) was a ‘victory’ through scrutinising and monitoring Leigh Day & Co Solicitors, the law firm that negotiated the settlement, whom CARICOM governments have now retained to negotiate a settlement for Afrikan slavery and Native genocide in the Caribbean. Such monitoring extends to any other law firm doing or seeking to do work in negotiating Afrikan and Afrikan Diaspora reparations settlements; 5. Challenging any legal strategy which runs counter to or injurious to our interests and pre-existing case for reparations as Afrikan reparations communities of interest within Britain, (which cannot be separated from the Global Afrikan Reparations case); 6. Charting an Afrikan self-determined path of ‘legal’ recourse and struggle for reparations as part of a broader social change strategy generally referred to as ‘community and/or social justice lawyering.’ Such an approach ‘decenters’ law from a narrow focus on litigation and the courts and rather shifts the focus on building and strengthening social movements for reparations, locally, nationally and internationally. The wider iNAPP is also working to: 1. Define, promote and advance reparations within the context of Pan‐Afrikan nation‐building and the ‘Reparations on the road to liberation’ agenda within and beyond the UK. 2. Engage in the building of the National Afrikan Peoples Parliament as an aspect of Afrikan institutional self‐repairs to repair the harms of chattel, colonial and neo-colonial forms of enslavement by working to harness and build Afrikans peoples collective power to effect and secure holistic reparations and redress; 3. Engage in a programme of mass public education, conscientisation and mobilisation to continue to inform, educate and consult Afrikans, in the UK and beyond, as to the full scope and spectrum of issues that the demand for reparations calls forth to organise and build a united front and a strategic alliance of Afrikan peoples in support of reparations from our perspective. Such mobilisation entails engaging in such areas as: charting an Afrikan self‐determined path of legal struggle for reparations; public and popular education programmes, political actions, lobbying, media outreach, research, information dissemination as well as development of reparations focused political education and legal literacy resources. 4. Play a role in reaching out to, collaborating and harmonising reparations thought and activism with all of the various aspects of the Global Afrikan Reparations Movement: legal, trade unionists, education, spiritual/religious and international alliances through mass education, community organising and mass mobilisation. Sis Esther Stanford-Xosei and Bro Kofi Malui Klu Co-Chairs Legal and Constitutional Sub Committee
Posted on: Sun, 03 Aug 2014 01:46:21 +0000
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