Decolonization in the Caribbean #4: Waiting on Reparations
The start of each UN Committee of 24 Regional Seminar usually begins with a type of plenary or keynote speech/statement. This is usually a prominent political leader or activist from the country or region that is hosting the seminar or a high-ranking elected official of the host government. As this year's seminar is in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, attendees were treated to a speech by the country's Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. His speech moved in and out of a variety of different topics, although there was one part that struck closest to home for me. Early on in his remarks he discussed his country achieving their independence almost 40 years earlier. He said that while he was a child raised in colonialism, he had grown into maturity through fighting for independence. For many countries, the birth of their nationhood is far in the past and so those who invoke it, do so across great temporal and rhetorical distance. But for a variety of former colonies, your independence