The 2024 Summit of Commonwealth Heads of State was held in Samoa with an emphasis on the environment. However, many attendees also wished to discuss the UK’s historic role in the slave trade and the potential for reparations. However, the UK Government is reluctant to begin any serious conversations on this. King Charles did not apologize for Great Britian’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Reed McIntire
29 January 2025
The Commonwealth Heads of State Summit was held in Samoa on 25-26 October 2024, with an increased emphasis on climate change resolutions and dealing with historical injustices perpetrated by the British Empire. The summit, a conference of heads of state or their representatives from all 56 Commonwealth nations, remained a lackluster affair.
The Commonwealth of Nations, often shortened to the Commonwealth, is an international association of nations, the vast majority of which were former subjects of the British Empire. Today, any nation can join the organization, and the Commonwealth now represents a third of the entire global population.
One of the most prevalent topics at the Summit was maintaining healthy and clean oceans worldwide. Twenty-five of the Commonwealth’s 52 member states are island nations, with the majority located in the Caribbean or Pacific regions. These nations are some of the hardest hit by climate change in recent years, with increasingly more devastating hurricanes in the Americas and rising sea levels in Asia being some of the most obvious threats.
As a result, the Summit released a statement, the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration, which reaffirms the organization’s commitment to sustainable practices and protections of oceans globally. However, the declaration does not list concrete measures and instead relies on vague language, using terms like “underlines”, “reaffirms”, or “recognizes”.
While the Declaration and Summit did publicly reaffirm support for climate measures such as the Paris Agreement, any environmental measures will be likely hard to implement without concrete, quantifiable steps.
In addition to the oceans and climate, slavery reparations were a dominant topic for the attendees. Many Commonwealth member states, particularly those in the Caribbean and Africa, are pressuring the United Kingdom to discuss how to atone for the transatlantic slave trade. Although King Charles acknowledged the “painful” history of the Commonwealth, he did not apologize for slavery or agree to reparations to African and Caribbean nations for Great Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.
Despite reparations not being an official topic, a bloc of 21 Caribbean countries, known as Caricom, presented a 10-point plan for potential reparations from the UK. The plan includes a formal apology, debt forgiveness, and assistance with public health crises. Caricom presented the plan as part of an official communiqué from the Summit attendees.
However, British PM Keir Starmer was reluctant to dive into the topic, noting that slavery was “not on the agenda” for the summit. The UK managed to strike the plan from the summit communiqué. Still, an official communiqué stated “the time has come” for honest discussions on the slave trade and its impacts.
If the UK were to pay reparations, it would likely pay numerous former colonies in the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados. The estimated amount of reparations would be over USD 20 billion. There is still no sign that the UK government will begin talks for reparations anytime soon.
