From Recognition to Repair: Five Questions I’m Carrying Forward

From Recognition to Repair: Five Questions I’m Carrying Forward
By CeeJay Marie | Scribe Diva Ink

I began this journey with surprise and I wrote BREAKING THE SILENCE: How the UN and Accra Are Forging a New Era of Reparatory Justice. My initial reaction was simple: How did I not know this was happening?

That question led me backward before it allowed me to move forward. I began studying the generations of people, movements and institutions that carried the demand for repair long before 2026. That history eventually became And They Kept Insisting: The Persistent Journey Toward Global Reparatory Solidarity.

Then I returned to the frameworks themselves. This time, I read differently.

I spent time with CARICOM's Ten-Point Plan for Reparatory Justice and the Accra Next Steps Commitments, comparing what each framework identifies as necessary for meaningful repair. CARICOM developed its plan principally for Caribbean governments and peoples while also positioning its work within the broader global African reparations movement. In July 2026, CARICOM Heads of Government approved a revised Ten-Point Plan and continued advancing collaboration with the African Union and other international efforts (CARICOM).

What struck me first was not what these frameworks might be missing.

It was how much they already understand.

There can be a tendency to reduce conversations about reparations to a single question: How much?

These frameworks make clear how inadequate that question is by itself. CARICOM's framework addresses formal apology, repatriation, Indigenous Peoples development, cultural institutions, public health, literacy, African knowledge, psychological rehabilitation, technology transfer and debt cancellation (CARICOM).

Accra goes considerably further in developing a global architecture. Its commitments encompass acknowledgment and apology, law and justice, compensatory reparations, cultural restitution, public health and well-being, education and cultural renewal, diaspora engagement and right of return, psychological and social healing, technology and capacity building, debt and financial justice, decolonization, global governance reform, transformation of global economic structures, corporate accountability, gender justice, climate justice and intergenerational considerations, among other areas (Government of Ghana).

That breadth matters. Centuries of enslavement, colonialism and racial exploitation did not create a single category of harm. Their consequences reached economies, governments, cultures, families, health, education, land, identity, international institutions and the ability of societies to determine their own futures. It follows that meaningful repair cannot reasonably be confined to a single category either.

I was particularly encouraged by the degree to which the emerging framework recognizes concepts such as sovereignty, institutional reform, capacity, historical truth and participation by affected communities. Those ideas begin to move reparatory justice beyond the question of what should be given toward the more complicated question of what should change.

That distinction stayed with me. And it led to several questions.

I offer them not as criticisms of the work being done. Some may already be under consideration. Others may be addressed as the emerging architecture develops. I am neither assuming they have been overlooked nor suggesting that I possess their answers. I am asking because the frameworks themselves have convinced me that reparatory justice is serious enough to warrant serious questions.

1. How will decision-making authority ultimately be distributed?

Accra envisions participation across governments, regional organizations, experts, civil society, affected communities and international institutions. President John Dramani Mahama has also announced a Global Advisory Panel on Reparatory Justice, an Expert Panel on the Restitution of Cultural Artefacts and a Global Legal Panel on Reparatory Justice. That is significant infrastructure (Government of Ghana).

My question concerns the distinction between participation and authority. Who ultimately makes which decisions? How will affected communities participate not merely as contributors of perspective, but as holders of meaningful decision-making power? When governments, experts, international bodies and descendant communities disagree, what mechanisms will determine whose judgment prevails?

I ask because inclusion is essential, but inclusion alone does not tell us how power is distributed. As reparatory justice moves from principle toward implementation, understanding where actual decision authority resides may become as important as determining who has a seat at the table.

2. How will international cooperation build enduring capacity without creating new forms of dependency?

Many of the remedies contemplated by CARICOM and Accra require enormous resources and expertise. Health systems need clinicians, researchers, laboratories and infrastructure. Technology transfer requires technical knowledge and access. Education requires institutions and educators. Cultural restitution requires conservation expertise, museums and archival capacity. Economic transformation requires financing, institutions and specialized knowledge. International cooperation will therefore be indispensable.

My question is what that cooperation is ultimately designed to leave behind. Will reparatory initiatives primarily provide services and resources, or will they also expand the ability of affected societies and communities to produce, govern, finance, research and sustain those things themselves?

I ask because successful repair should, where possible, increase agency. Cooperation is extraordinarily valuable. Dependence is something different. One measure of successful capacity building may therefore be whether communities gain more meaningful choices about when, how and with whom they cooperate.

3. How will responsibility for repair be separated from authority over repair?

This may be the question that stayed with me most strongly.

Many reparatory claims necessarily involve governments, institutions, corporations and other entities that participated in, benefited from or inherited advantages from systems of enslavement, colonialism and racial exploitation. Accra itself calls upon states, institutions and organizations connected to those systems to acknowledge their roles and participate in repair (Government of Ghana).

But responsibility for contributing to repair raises another question: Does responsibility for providing resources also confer authority over how those resources are used?

I do not think those are necessarily the same thing.

An institution can have an obligation to finance repair without necessarily being the institution best positioned to design or administer it. I ask because reparatory justice seeks to address historical relationships profoundly shaped by unequal power. Implementation should therefore be attentive to whether the administration of repair inadvertently recreates aspects of the relationship repair is intended to address.

Responsibility matters. So does stewardship.

4. Who will define success, and how will we know when repair is working?

The Accra process is already moving toward institutional mechanisms, continued dialogue, monitoring and implementation. That is encouraging because declarations alone cannot tell us whether conditions are changing (Government of Ghana).

But measurement introduces its own questions. Who determines what success looks like? Governments? International institutions? Economists? Researchers? Affected communities? Some combination of all of them? And what happens when their definitions differ?

A government may measure dollars invested. A health institution may measure clinics constructed. An educational program may measure enrollment. An international organization may measure compliance with agreed commitments. Communities may be measuring something else entirely.

I ask because what we choose to measure eventually shapes what institutions work to produce. Reparatory justice will therefore need measures capable of capturing not only activity and investment, but meaningful changes in people's lives, opportunities, agency and institutions.

5. Can repair succeed without changing the structures that continue to reproduce unequal power?

This is the broadest question I carry forward.

Accra explicitly recognizes that the legacies of enslavement and colonial exploitation continue to manifest through structural inequalities, economic disparities, systemic racism, cultural erasure and development challenges. Its framework extends into law, global governance, economic architecture, debt, corporate accountability and institutional reform (Government of Ghana).

That is one of the things I appreciate most about it. It acknowledges that reparatory justice cannot concern itself exclusively with repairing yesterday while ignoring structures operating today.

My question is how far that principle will ultimately travel in implementation. When a structure has helped produce, preserve or reproduce an inequity, is correcting the outcome enough? Or must meaningful repair also alter the distribution of power within the structure itself?

That does not necessarily mean dismantling institutions. Structural change can take many forms, including redistributing authority, expanding capacity, creating independent accountability, increasing transparency, changing incentives or decentralizing power. I do not pretend to know what the appropriate mechanism will be in every circumstance.

I ask because a reparatory intervention can improve conditions while leaving the underlying relationship of power substantially unchanged. If repair is intended to be durable, that distinction deserves attention.

The more I have learned about the work underway, the more impressed I have become by its scope.

That matters to say plainly.

It is easy to examine an ambitious framework and immediately begin cataloguing what remains unresolved. It is harder, and I think more responsible, to recognize the magnitude of what has already been accomplished.

CARICOM helped transform reparatory justice into coordinated regional government policy and explicitly conceived its work as contributing to a global movement (CARICOM). Ghana then successfully spearheaded a United Nations resolution that placed Member States in the position of formally voting on a declaration concerning the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans. One hundred twenty-three voted yes.

Accra followed recognition with an effort toward architecture.

Rather than limiting that architecture to financial compensation, participants wrestled with law, health, culture, education, finance, technology, governance, climate, gender, corporations, historical memory, diaspora relationships and institutional reform.

That deserves more than acknowledgment.

It deserves appreciation.

The questions I have raised exist because this work now exists. There would be nothing to interrogate, refine, implement or build upon had generations of people not first insisted that repair was necessary, had CARICOM not helped institutionalize that demand, had Ghana not carried the issue into the United Nations General Assembly, and had participating nations, experts, advocates, scholars and communities not gathered in Accra to begin asking what comes next.

So I offer these questions in that spirit.

Perhaps some have already been answered. Perhaps others are being discussed now. Perhaps my own understanding will change as I continue learning.

I hope so.

Because I am not approaching this work looking for reasons it cannot succeed. I am fascinated by the possibility that it can.

And I am grateful to the people doing the extraordinarily difficult work of determining what repair might actually require.

I look forward to learning more.

References

Caribbean Community. (2026). The CARICOM ten point plan for reparatory justice: A manifesto for the coming enlightenment.

Government of Ghana. (2026, June 19). The Accra next steps commitments on reparatory justice. High-Level Consultative Conference on the Next Steps to the Landmark United Nations General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/250.

United Nations General Assembly. (2026, March 25). Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity (A/RES/80/250). United Nations.

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