Minister within the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Steven Jacobs, has called for decisive action to address the injustices and challenges faced by people of African descent, urging that meaningful progress requires more than just commitments.
Delivering remarks on behalf of CARICOM at the Fifth Session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Jacobs said that the United Nations’ recognition of slavery as the gravest crime against humanity acknowledges an essential truth but does not address the unresolved issues facing people of African descent.
“Acknowledgement alone does not resolve injustice. If left unaddressed, its effects will continue to shape opportunity, access and development.
For CARICOM states, this is a lived reality,” he said, adding that: “Our call for reparatory justice is therefore grounded in responsibility and equity, in the ten-point plan for reparatory justice as we continue to advance an evolving framework rooted in accountability, development and partnership.”
Jacobs also noted that global systems continue to reflect the legacies of enslavement and colonialism, maintaining persistent economic imbalances and constrained development pathways.
He highlighted that, for small island developing states, these challenges are further intensified by climate change. He said that addressing these interconnected realities requires coherence across reparatory justice, reform of the international financial architecture, and urgent, equitable climate action.
“The Second International Decade must therefore be a decade of delivery—where commitments translate into measurable progress in the lives of people of African descent,” the minister asserted.
He noted that the story of people of African descent is often shaped by injustice, dispossession, and exclusion. He expressed CARICOM’s commitment to working with the Forum and the wider international community to deliver justice, recognising past, present, and future realities of people of African descent.
