The University of the West Indies (UWI) has signed a £20 million slavery reparations agreement with the University of Glasgow. The money was to implement the reparations the British government paid to slave owners when slavery was abolished in the UK in 1834. This is the first signed agreement for slavery reparations between the UK and the Caribbean since British Emancipation in 1838.
The £20 million fund will be provided by the University of Glasgow to sponsor joint researches and development initiatives in the Caribbean over the next 20 years. For starters, the University of Glasgow and the UWI will jointly establish and manage a new institution to be called the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research.
This new institution will research and promote solutions to the century-long problems created by slave in the Caribbean. The institution will develop solution initiatives in the areas of medicine, public health, economics, economic growth, cultural identity, cultural industries, and other development programmes required for the total transformation of Caribbean nations.
The entire funding and the regional development initiatives to be executed in the Caribbean are Glasgow’s ways of apologizing for how Britain and Europe enriched themselves through the slave trade in the Caribbean.
The £20 million agreement was signed at UWI’s headquarters in Jamaica by Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles and Dr. David Duncan, University of Glasgow’s Chief Operating Officer, representing Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli.
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