The Institute of Caribbean Studies of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP), invites the academic community and the general public to the 1st Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis Memorial Annual Lecture: “Reparations and the Right to Development: The CARICOM Case” by Dr. Verene Shepherd (University of the West Indies-Mona, Jamaica; Chair, United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Vice-Chair, CARICOM Reparation Commission).  Dr. Daniel Nina (Professor of Law and Political Science; Editor in Chief of El Post Antillano) will introduce the lecturer.

This activity will take place on Thursday, March 20, 2014, from 1:00 to 3:30pm at the Manuel Maldonado Denis Amphitheatre (CRA 108) of the Carmen Rivera de Alvarado Building, School of Social Sciences, UPR-RP.

Description: The 34th Meeting of the CARICOM Heads of Government held in July 2013 in Trinidad & Tobago, agreed to establish National Committees on Reparation, to ascertain the moral, ethical and legal case for the payment of reparation by former colonial European countries, to the nations and people of the Caribbean Community, for native genocide, the transatlantic slave trade and a racialized system of chattel slavery. Heads further agreed to establish a CARICOM Reparations Commission to report directly to a Prime Ministerial Sub-committee chaired by the Prime Minister of Barbados. Why has CARICOM joined the reparation movement after decades of virtual silence?  What strategies will it pursue? How will the work of Caribbean scholars like Gordon K. Lewis provide the intellectual guidance to the process?  These are among the questions that the Lecture will try to address, especially the strategies linked to the discourses on the right to development.

This lecture will be broadcast LIVE online through the following website: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/cc71

Comments and suggestions on this presentation will be welcome at: iec@uprrp.edu

For further information, you may call Dr. Humberto García Muñiz, Director, at (787) 764-0000, extension 4212, or write to iec@uprrp.edu

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