NEW DATE - Panel Workshop: Reparations for Slavery and Haiti's 1825 Indemnification: The Responsibility of Contemporary Private Actors

This in-person event, with an option to attend online, has been rescheduled from 9 May 2023.

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Chaired by Professor Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan and Dr Andrew Sanger

Time: 17:00 hrs - 19:00 hrs

On Tuesday 30 May 2023, the Lauterpacht Centre will host an inter-disciplinary panel discussion on reparations for slavery that focuses on the responsibility of private actors who benefited from—or were otherwise involved in—slavery. It will explore Haiti’s 1825 indemnification as a case study.

As recent attempts to obtain reparations from private actors demonstrate (e.g., the Drax case in Barbados), there are many challenging questions of law and responsibility still to be resolved. These include the impact of time on liability/reparations (manifesting itself in legal doctrines of limitations, acquiesce etc), the difficulty of identifying substantive law for liability (and related questions of inter-temporality and the role of national institutions in developing legal liability), the challenge of identifying the relationship between the private actor and the enslavement that took place, the role of international law in such claims, and the relationship between the private actors and the state.

The Panel will use Haiti's 1825 indemnification as a unique case study to explore the above- mentioned challenges. In 1825, France demanded—with warships—a 150-million-franc indemnity (reduced in 1838 to 90 million) to settle claims over property, which included people emancipated through the Haitian Revolution, in exchange for diplomatic recognition of Haitian independence and an end to French threats of invasion. To meet this demand, Haiti took significant loans from the French Bank Crédit Industriel et Commercial, with remainder of the debt eventually being moved to the US and US banks (e.g. to the National City Bank of New York—now Citibank. Imposed by abusive force, these debts inflicted crippling damage to the Haitian economy and the Haitian people over many years and yet the question(s) of reparations by state and private actors remains unresolved.

Panel Outline:

•    Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, Professor of Law, University of Cambridge: Making a case for reparations for grave historic injustices.
•    Sabine Cadeau, Lecturer in African Diaspora History at SOAS, the University of London: The Haiti reparation case.
•    Mathias Audit, Law Professor at the Sorbonne School of Law (University of Paris 1): Legal aspects of claims against French banks to obtain reimbursement of the independence debt.
•    Priscellia Robinson, founding member of Queens Court Chambers and Head of Chambers, UN Fellow: Liability under English law of private actors involved in the transatlantic trade.
•    Andrew Sanger, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge: International Law: Reparations and the Responsibility of Private Actors