Description
There are bodies of literature on reparations in state-to-state contexts, truth commissions for the remedy of human rights abuses, and in approaches to land redistribution. However, this literature is largely compartmentalised to pursuits in different countries. What is missing is an overarching synopsis of the contextual and conceptual layers of reparations and the differing perspectives between them in the context of how historically marginalized communities challenge dominant structures of power. These various struggles for reparations could be better understood to elicit what learning there could be between and across them. This missing layer of review and analysis would enable the application of reparations into other areas where it can add value, particularly in approaches to global justice. Reparations can disrupt the orthodoxies of development: its ideas are capable of unsettling thought processes and slowly enabling a re-envisioning towards different solutions. This presentation will summarise a range of claims and current forms of reparation, including the contestations within these areas and the role and impact of social movements for reparations. Second, it will look at the overlap of reparations with relevant conceptual fields of literature such as decoloniality. Third, it will unpack what the value of reparations approaches, through restorative justice, repair, restitution and other approaches, is to contemporary struggles for justice, thereby offering ideas for civil society.
