A Jamaican delegation to the United Kingdom has said it will file a petition addressed to King Charles III to seek legal guidance on the question of slavery reparations. This is the first time a British Commonwealth state will use this legal route “for the cause of reparatory justice”, the Jamaican delegation said, as the visit to London kicks off on Monday. King Charles is Jamaica’s head of state, as the country is yet to transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic. The Jamaican government estimates that the country is owed about $10bn, but the UK has repeatedly refused to pay for historical slavery.
What is the latest petition all about, and how will the UK respond? Here’s what we know: Jamaica’s relations with the UK stem back to 1655 when it became an English colony. Hundreds of thousands of enslaved African people toiled in Jamaica under more than 300 years of British rule and faced brutal conditions. In August 1962, after Jamaica became independent, it established diplomatic ties with the UK and also became a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, an international political association of 56 member countries made up of former British colonies.
The UK and Jamaica are also major trade partners, with UK exports to Jamaica reaching about $222m in 2025 and UK imports from Jamaica reaching about $76m. While Jamaica has been independent since 1962, it has continued to recognise the British monarch as its head of state. But in recent years, calls to ditch the British king as Jamaica’s head of state have grown. In March 2022, Jamaican activists, as well as prominent professors, politicians and other leaders, rejected a visit by the duke and duchess of Cambridge, calling on the United Kingdom to apologise and pay reparations for hundreds of years of slavery. In an open letter published before the British royal couple’s arrival, 100 Jamaican leaders had said they saw “no reason to celebrate” the Queen’s coronation “because her leadership, and that of her predecessors, have perpetuated the greatest human rights tragedy in the history of humankind”. “During her 70 years on the throne, your grandmother has done nothing to redress and atone for the suffering of our ancestors that took place during her reign and/or during the entire period of British trafficking of Africans, enslavement, indentureship and colonialization,” the letter read.
In December 2024, the Jamaican government also tabled a constitutional amendment bill in parliament to replace the British king as the head of state. In June last year, Jamaica formally raised a petition addressed to the British monarch seeking slavery reparations. On Monday, Jamaica’s Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport said its minister, Olivia Grange, is expected to lead the country’s delegation “to advance Jamaica’s push for reparations for the African ancestors who suffered under hundreds of years of enslavement” in London. The ministry added that it would meet with the British Museum to discuss “the repatriation of cultural artefacts taken from Jamaica”.
The petition will ask the king, Jamaica’s head of state, to answer three questions on the transatlantic slave trade to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Caribbean island’s highest court of appeal based in London. Under the Judicial Committee Act of 1833, the UK monarch has the authority to refer legal matters to the court for an advisory opinion. The questions include: whether the enslavement of Africans in Jamaica was legal under English common law, whether it violated international law, and whether the UK has a legal obligation to provide a remedy for the harm caused by slavery. “We want the answers. Once we get the answers, or once we get a response to those questions, then the next steps will be determined,” Grange said.
Olivette Otele, a historian and distinguished research professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS University of London, told Al Jazeera that the king’s role in the process was symbolic. “He doesn’t make any decisions. So it’s really up to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and also the British government to respond to this petition. My sense is that they’re going to say that enslavement was not legal under English law,” she said. In recent years, several Commonwealth nations have been demanding that the UK pay reparations for its role in the transatlantic slave trade.
At a meeting in Samoa in October 2024 for the biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), Commonwealth leaders said they would proceed with “plans to examine reparatory justice” for the slave trade. At the summit, Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis had said it was time for the Commonwealth to seek “justice” for the brutal history of slavery. “Let’s have a conversation about this … We all appreciate this, the horrendous impact that the transatlantic slave business had on the African diaspora, and it requires justice,” Davis told the news outlet Politico. The UK’s involvement in the slave trade began in 1562, and by the 1730s, the UK was the biggest slave trading nation in the world, according to the UK parliament’s website. The website adds that British ships transported more than three million Africans, mainly to the UK’s North American and Caribbean colonies.
In June 2023, a report by consulting firm Brattle Group, titled Reparations for Transatlantic Chattel Slavery, argued that the UK owes reparations to 14 Caribbean countries. These include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago. Reparations have been paid over slavery in the past – to the owners of slaves. In 1833, the British government agreed to compensation of 20 million pounds for slave owners for the “loss of their property” after passing legislation to abolish slavery in the British Empire, worth about 2 billion pounds ($2.6bn) today.
In March 2024, British institutions such as the Church of England also pledged to put together a 1-billion-pound ($1.35bn) fund to address its role in slavery. But UK leaders have so far resisted engaging in discussions about paying reparations to the countries that received trafficked slaves, and where their descendants now live. In October 2024, former UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said that the British government would not be paying for slavery and would also not apologise for it. The British monarch has also not issued a formal apology for the crown’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.
So far, the Netherlands is the only European country to have apologised for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, in 2022. But the Netherlands ruled out paying reparations and instead established an approximately 200 million euros ($216m) fund to promote social initiatives in the Netherlands, the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname. In March, even when the UN General Assembly voted to recognise the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity”, many European nations, including the UK, abstained from voting in favour of the resolution. During colonial rule, British merchants enslaved and forcibly transported 600,000 to 1 million Africans to Jamaica between the 17th century and the early 19th century.
In its current petition to the UK, the Jamaican government estimates that the country is owed about $10bn from Britain, but how the UK will respond to the petition is yet to be determined. “We understand the Jamaican government is seeking a petition to be heard before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council,” a Buckingham Palace spokesperson told reporters in the country in response to Jamaica’s inquiry on Monday. Otele said she would be surprised if the new British Labour Party-led government decides to respond favourably to the requests made by the Jamaican government, but highlighted that the latest petition is nevertheless significant. “It’s the first time the petition is being raised and its legal aspect is being debated, because so far we’ve only been talking about reparations in terms of financial compensation. Now we’re looking at the highest court of the land to legislate and have more than a conversation about the UK’s law on slavery,” she said, adding that this could also push other Commonwealth nations to raise such petitions with the UK. “British society is ready to apologise. There have been conversations rolling about the matter.
But the UK government’s stance has so far only favoured the elite, with them paying compensations to slave owners. So the British government needs to consider the matter and answer questions on its role in slavery.”
