Earlier in October CHOGM, the Commonwealth Head of Government Meeting, took place in Samoa, where Caribbean leaders succeeded in including a call for reparatory justice regarding the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement in the Leader Statement (point 22, page 8) despite the UK government's objection. In this episode Dr. Elizabeth Kahn, an Associate Professor of Political Theory researching injustices and moral dilemmas, looks more closely at the concepts of historical injustice, reparations, and colonialism and what case can be made for reparations from a philosophical perspective.

To learn more about our guest, visit Elizabeth Kahn's website: https://www.durham.ac.uk/staff/elizabeth-kahn/

The CHOGM Leader Statement can be found here: https://thecommonwealth.org/news/chogm2024/Samoa-communique-leaders-statement-and-declarations

Literature discussed in this episode:

Amighetti, Sara. and Nuti, Alasia 2015. Towards a Shared Redress. Journal of Political Philosophy, 23: 385-405.

Bhargava, R. 2013. Overcoming the Epistemic Injustice of Colonialism. Global Policy, 4: 413-417.

Butt, Daniel 2007. “On Benefiting from Injustice.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37(1): 129–52.

Butt, Daniel 2008 Rectifying International Injustice: Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Butt, Daniell 2012. Repairing Historical Wrongs and the End of Empire. Social & Legal Studies, 21(2), 227-242.

Lu, Catherine 2011. Colonialism as Structural Injustice: Historical Responsibility and Contemporary Redress. Journal of Political Philosophy, 19: 261-281.

Lu Catherine 2017. Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

McKeown, Maeve 2021. Backward-looking reparations and structural injustice. Contemporary Political Theory 20, 771–794.

Nuti Alasia 2019. Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Music: The Good News by SHANTI from https://tunetank.com/track/263-the-good-news/