Agenda
UK Reparations Conference 2026:
From Resolution to Repair
17.10.2026
09:00 - 10:00
REGISTRATION
at Front Desk
09:45 - 10:00
LIBATION
Kojo Asare Bonsu (Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament)
10:00 - 10:25
WELCOME
The Light
CONFERENCE WELCOME
Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (Chair, APPG for Afrikan Reparations) | Rita Remi-Judah (Co-Clerk, Quakers Reparations Working Group) | Jacqui McKenzie (Partner, Leigh Day) | Eleanor Shearer (Senior Research Fellow, Common Wealth)
10:25 - 11:40
OPENING PLENARY
The Light
Onyekachi Wambu (Special Projects Director, AFFORD) | Esther Xosei (Executive Director, Stop The Maangamizi/ Maangamizi Educational Trust) | Hon. Dr. Ralph E. Gonsalves (Former Prime Minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines) | Nana Kobina Nketsia V (Paramount Chief of Essikado Traditional Area, Sekondi, Western Region of Ghana) | The Rt. Hon. Ms Diane Abbott MP (APPG for Afrikan Reparations) | Lord Marvin Rees OBE (Former Mayor of Bristol)
11:40 - 11:55
BREAK
11:55 - 13:10
FIRST BREAKOUT SESSIONS
THE LAW: Building a Legal Mandate for Repair
BENJAMIN LAY 3
The legal terrain for reparatory justice has shifted markedly since last year’s conference. In March 2026, the UN General Assembly adopted a Ghana-led resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement the “gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparatory justice, including restitution, apologies and compensation. This session will ask what legal strategies are currently being deployed, which precedents and rulings strengthen the case for repair, why formal recognition at UN and treaty-body level has not translated into UK government action, and what a Commission of Enquiry would need to be empowered to do if law is to be a genuine engine of repair rather than a site of continued refusal.
Chair: Esther Xosei (Executive Director, Stop The Maangamizi/ Maangamizi Educational Trust)
Dr Nora Wittman (Pan-African legal scholar) | Harj Narulla (Barrister, Doughty Street Chambers) | Gretchen Rohr (Senior Advisor, Reform Initiatives) | Jacqui McKenzie (Partner, Leigh Day) | Ruth Ogbewekon (Focal point for research, Pan African Lawyers Union) | Prof Justin Hansford (Executive Director, Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center) | Dr Panashe Chigumadzi (African Union rapporteur for the Committee of Experts on Reparations)
WHAT WAS TAKEN: From Ancestral Remains to Institutional Repair
WALDO WILLIAMS
The restitution debate in Britain has entered an important new phase. On 16 September 2026, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced a review of its Guidance for the Care of Human Remains in Museums, first published in 2005. Following years of campaigning by APPG-Afrikan Reparations, AFFORD, AFRIMUHERE and DTA, Arts Minister Ruth Mackenzie acknowledged that legal, ethical and moral thinking around human remains has changed significantly and that national standards must reflect contemporary practice. This development presents a powerful question for the reparations movement: If Britain is reconsidering the possession and return of ancestral remains in colonial contexts, what else must now be reconsidered?
Chair: Connie Bell (Co-Founder, Decolonising the Archives)
Molemo Moiloa (Co-Director, Andani) | Dr Dan Hicks (Professor of Contemporary Archaeology, University of Oxford) | Iben Bø (Doctoral student, SOAS Centre for Pan-African Studies) | Peter Herbert OBE (Chair, Society of Black Lawyers) | Richard Reddie (Project Director, Churches Together)
WHO PAYS, WHO HEALS THE PLANET: Climate Debt and Economic Repair
THE LIGHT
The legacy of colonialism and empire continues to shape global inequalities in the fight against climate change, and this year that argument has moved decisively onto the intergovernmental stage. In June 2026, the African Union and CARICOM jointly adopted a 19-point reparations plan that explicitly links reparatory justice to climate: it calls for a Global Reparations Fund and comprehensive debt relief and cancellation for affected countries. This session will ask how economies and economic structures need to be repaired or reimagined through a reparations lens to deliver a genuinely Just Transition, and what political and other alliances - including with the AU-CARICOM mechanism and the COP31 process - are needed to make that happen.
Chair: Priya Lukka (Political Economist)
Dr Gail Bradbrook (Co-Founder, Extinction Rebellion) | Laura Kotzur (Doctoral Researcher, Free University of Berlin) | Cllr Tyrone Scott (Global Majority Greens) | Dr Devon Taylor (President, Jamaica Beach Birthright Environmental Movement) | Sarri Bater (Founder & Director, OpenEdge) | Makmid Kamara (Founder, Reform Initiatives)
FROM THE GROUND UP: Trade Unions, Community Organisers and Pan-Afrikan Councils
BENJAMIN LAY 1 & 2
The formal breakthroughs of the past year - the UN General Assembly resolution, the AU-CARICOM 19-point plan, CERD General Recommendation No. 40 - did not arrive by themselves. They are the product of decades of grassroots organising: trade union solidarity committees, community organisers, and Pan-Afrikan councils who built the pressure that made state and treaty-body action possible. This session puts that organising infrastructure centre stage, asking what role trade unions, community organisers and Pan-Afrikan councils currently play in the reparations movement, and what a genuinely ground-up Commission of Enquiry would need to look like.
Chair: Mel Mullings (Chair, RMT Reparations Conference)
Sonia Winifred (Psychodynamic Psychotherapist) | June Lewis (Co-Chair, International Decade of People of African Descent) | Nana Meduty Bonsu (Afrikan Reparations Day Council) | Judy L Richards (General Secretary, Global African Congress)
13:10 - 15:10
LUNCH
13:20 - 14:25
SECOND BREAKOUT SESSIONS
WHAT WE NEED TO HEAR FROM ONE ANOTHER: Healing and Solidarity
WALDO WILLIAMS
Enslavement, colonialism, apartheid and racial domination did not only dispossess African peoples of land, labour, resources and sovereignty. They fractured families and communities, disrupted identities and cultures and created hierarchies among African peoples. This session explores healing as an integral part of the reparations agenda. It will create a facilitated space for honest dialogue about fractures within and between African communities and consider how healing, reconciliation and the repair of intra-African and Africa-diaspora relationships should be incorporated into the Terms of Reference of a Commission of Enquiry on Reparations.
Chair: Onyekachi Wambu (Special Projects Director, AFFORD)
Nova Reid (Author & Thought Leader) | Dr Ron Daniels (Founder & President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century) | Karen Carberry (Visiting Lecturer, University of Oxford) | Eugene Skeef (Director, Umoya Creations) | Dr Ahmed Zanya Bugre (The Global Circle)
TRUTH BEFORE REPAIR: Writing a Mandate for a Commission of Enquiry
HILDA CLARK
This session meets at a moment when the international mandate for such a body has never been stronger. In March 2026, the UN General Assembly declared the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity and called for reparatory justice, and in June 2026 the African Union and CARICOM adopted a joint 19-point reparations plan. This session will consider precedents such as national truth and reconciliation commissions elsewhere in the world, and ask what powers, independence and scope a UK Commission of Enquiry would need to investigate historical wrongs and recommend a credible programme of repair.
Chair: Sai Murray (Organising member, PARCOE) & Daniel Kofi Davidson (Stop the Maangamizi)
Esther Xosei (Executive Director, Stop The Maangamizi/ Maangamizi Educational Trust) | Priya Lukka (Political Economist) | Dr Nicola Frith (Professor, University of Liverpool) | Eleanor Shearer (Policy Lead, Common Wealth) | Dr Asha Herten-Crabb (Assistant Professor, University of Warwick) | Florence Mbahupa Handura (Ovaherero genocide activist)
FROM CHARITY TO JUSTICE: Faith Institutions, NGOs and the Duty to Repair
BENJAMIN LAY 1 & 2
Many major church denominations maintain historical connections to the forced enslavement of African peoples - connections that significantly contributed to their wealth and influence for centuries. This panel will also turn its attention to the international aid sector, which has long faced criticism for perpetuating colonial attitudes and maintaining a Western-centric approach. Ultimately, this discussion seeks to unpack the complex task of addressing historical wrongs within both faith institutions and the aid sector, while putting forward practical policy recommendations for achieving justice and accountability.
Chair: Dawn Butler MP (APPG Afrikan Reparations)
Robert Beckford (Professor, University of Wolverhampton) | Charmaine Simpson (CEO, Black History Studies) | Lena Bheeroo (Co-Chair, Board Racial Diversity UK) | Cllr Scott Ainslie (Lambeth Council) | Dr Michael Banner (Dean, Trinity College, University of Cambridge)
14:10 - 15:30
THIRD BREAKOUT SESSIONS
RACISM: From Historical Crime to Present-day Harm
BENJAMIN LAY 3
This session starts from a claim that has moved from activism into international law: that the racism experienced today is not simply analogous to enslavement and colonialism but is a direct, continuing consequence of them. In August 2026, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination gave that claim formal weight, finding in General Recommendation No. 40 that the harms of the transatlantic slave trade “continue to manifest” in present-day racial disparities. This session will ask what organisations are currently doing - and what still needs to be done - to close the distance between recognising racism’s colonial roots and building institutional and policy change.
Chair: Weyman Bennett (Co-convenor, Stand Up To Racism)
Ife Thompson (Founder, BLAM UK) | Kimberly McIntosh (Windrush Policy Lead, Action for Race Equality) | Gaynel Curry, (Chair, UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent)
WHO TELLS OUR STORY: Reparations in the Arts and Media
THE LIGHT
Reparations concern not only what was taken from African peoples, but also what was said about them. Slavery and colonialism relied upon narratives portraying Africans as inferior, violent, primitive or incapable of governing themselves. Newspapers, literature, scholarship and popular culture helped circulate these ideas and legitimise exploitation, dispossession and colonial rule. This session will examine the historical and contemporary role of media in constructing narratives about Africa and African-descended peoples and explore what reparative journalism might mean. Crucially, the session will generate practical proposals for the Terms of Reference of the proposed Commission of Enquiry on Reparations.
Chair: Nadine White (Founder, Black Current News)
Nels Abbey (Writer & Broadcaster) | Marcus Ryder MBE (CEO, Film & TV Charity) | Joseph Harker (Senior Editor, Diversity and Development, The Guardian) | Onyeka Igwe (Associate Professor of Contemporary Art, University of Oxford) | Kim Poole (Executive Director, Teaching Artist Institute) | Shubham Jain (Research Fellow, Centre for Sport & Human Rights)
TEACHING THE TRUTH: Education, Memory and the Case for Repair
SARAH FELL
Education can serve as both a remedy for ignorance and a driving force for liberation, providing a deeper insight into the reparations movement. The government's Curriculum and Assessment Review, led by Professor Becky Francis, published its final report and government response in November 2025, and campaigners continue to press for Black and colonial history to be embedded across the curriculum rather than taught as an optional add-on. This session will look at how we can fully unlock the potential of education to provide a sound knowledge base about enslavement and colonialism, explore the advances made in the calls to decolonise the curriculum since the Review, and offer suggestions for the policy changes we need to see to truly unlock the potential of education.
Chair: Dr Wanda Wyporska (Chief Executive, Black Cultural Archives)
Lavinya Stennett (Founder & CEO, The Black Curriculum) | Malik Al Nasir (PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge) | Annabelle Woghiren (Activist & Educator) | Michelle Gayle (Co-Founder, The World Reimagined)
London Launch of the Global Reparations Hub
WALDO WILLIAMS (starts at 14:25)
Chair: Kwesi Ochosi (Founder, Building Trust Consortium)
Dr Chevy Eugene (Dalhousie University) | Rita Remi-Judah (Co-Clerk, Quakers Reparations Working Group) | Cllr Antoinette Fernandez (Global Majority Greens) | Charmaine Simpson (CEO, Black History Studies) | Zahra Bei & Imaan Odeleye (No More Exclusions) | Ryan Dube (#TeesToThames Reparations Project)
15:30 - 15:50
REFLECTIONS & BREAK
The Light
Reflections from conference participants.
15:55 - 16:40
CLOSING PLENARY
The Light
With contributions from Professor Verene Shepherd (Vice-Chair, CARICOM Reparations Commission and Vice-Chair, UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination) | Kenniss Henry (National Co-Chair, N’COBRA) | Jasmine Mickens (Director, Global Africa Reparations & Restitution Fund)