An opinionated article on the lack of reparations for past atrocities in the global sphere, focusing on case studies of the legacy of slavery, the Belgian Congo and the abuses of Japanese “comfort women”.
By Dalal Abu Diab Y12
Reparations: that inconvenient invoice history keeps sliding under the door—always unsigned, always unpaid. It’s the ultimate game of moral hot potato, except no one wants to hold it, touch it, or even admit it exists. The mere mention of reparations summons a well-rehearsed symphony of emotional dodges: performative guilt, chest-puffing pride, wounded national egos, and, for many, a sudden and urgent need to talk about the weather. It’s like a burnt smell in the kitchen you’ve decided to live with—faint enough to ignore, but persistent enough to ruin the whole house.
From American slavery to Congolese rubber, reparations have become the conversational equivalent of a live grenade lobbed into polite society. Everyone acknowledges that something terrible happened. No one agrees on who should pay. And spoiler: no one plans to. Because the idea that the past might come with a balance due? That’s a little too genuine.
Let’s face it—reparations ask a question no one wants to answer: what if the past isn’t actually past? What if the legacy of empire, exploitation, and racial hierarchy didn’t quietly die in a history book but lives on—in wealth gaps, crumbling infrastructures, and unacknowledged trauma? The idea isn’t just uncomfortable—it’s destabilising. Because once you admit that the benefits of colonialism and slavery still exist, you also admit you owe something. And not just a fond apology. You owe cash. Power. Land. Recognition. But how does one price dignity stolen in bulk?
Colonial reparations add another layer of absurdity. How do you compensate for the cultural erasure, the grinding humiliation, the entire civilisation restructured to serve foreign wealth? Belgium could toss back a few stolen masks and awkwardly express “deep regret” for the Congo’s decimation, but how exactly do you return thirteen million lives? Do we slap a sticker price on genocide and call it a day?
And yet, here lies the brutal irony: the more grotesque the crime, the less likely anyone is to pay. Real reparations would require more than a museum swap and a televised apology—they’d demand reconfiguring entire global systems designed to benefit the pillagers. But power rarely dismantles itself. It prefers commissions, not consequences.
Across the Atlantic, the United States offers a masterclass in historic amnesia. The land of liberty, founded on unpaid labour, where freedom was so cherished that it was rationed out by skin colour. The country that can barely bring itself to say the word “reparations” without launching into a TED Talk on progress. Over two centuries of systemic enslavement, wealth extraction, and human commodification, and the response? Symbolic gestures, vague platitudes, and legislative proposals sent to die quietly in committee.
Take H.R. 40—the bill to study reparations for African Americans, first introduced in 1989 and still somehow “under review.” One might think the government was trying to decode ancient Sanskrit, not reckon with its own history. Meanwhile, the racial wealth gap yawns wider, generations of economic harm remain unpaid, and the national mood is still, essentially: “Can’t we all just move on?” Of course, it’s easier to manufacture progress than to make it. America prefers to cosplay as a post-racial society while the same structures hum quietly in the background. A few statues come down, a few streets get renamed, but the underlying ledger—the one with $12 trillion in unpaid labour, per the Journal of African American History—remains untouched. If reparations were a bank loan, there’d be men in suits repossessing the Capitol by now.
And when the moral high ground clashes with financial interest, guess which one takes a back seat? Hint: it’s not the one that funds election campaigns. Even after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Daunte Wright, and too many others, even after national uprisings and global solidarity movements, the idea of financial atonement is still framed as “divisive” or “not the right time.” As if there were ever a polite moment to acknowledge stolen lives.
So what has the U.S. offered in return? Mostly mood boards. Symbolic apologies. Festive Black History Month posters in corporate lobbies. The occasional presidential tear at Selma. Reparations? That’s a bridge too far—despite over three decades of attempts to even study the issue through H.R. 40. The bill has become a case study in legislative inertia: reintroduced repeatedly, debated rarely, passed never. Apparently, the U.S. can launch a drone strike with 99% precision but can’t commission a study without 30 years of handwringing. True reparations aren’t about money; they’re about moral accounting. And morality is a hard sell when the system still works perfectly–for the few.
In Belgium, everything’s a proud tradition—except for the colonial past, which is quietly ignored like the unwanted guest at a family gathering. King Leopold II’s Congo Free State wasn’t just exploitative—it was a well-oiled genocide machine. Between 10 and 13 million people perished for rubber quotas and imperial vanity. Hands were chopped off. Villages razed. Whole communities obliterated in the name of European progress. And Belgium? It offered a few statues and a shrug.
Ex-Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s 2020 “regret” felt more like someone apologising for stepping on your foot in the metro than acknowledging one of the worst atrocities of the modern era. Regret is what you feel when you forget an anniversary—not when your ancestors depopulate a nation. Still, no cheque followed. The museums remain impressively full.
Belgium, like most former colonial powers, treats reparations as a nuisance—an unfortunate side effect of having too much history. The real legacy of colonialism isn’t just in the stolen artefacts or forgotten massacres; it’s in the economic asymmetry, in the fact that Belgium thrives while the DRC struggles with the wreckage of what was taken. You can’t fix that with a few exhibitions and a plaque.
Of course, Belgium isn’t alone. The UK still hasn’t addressed the carnage of the Partition. France continues to waltz around its Algerian war crimes. These are not logistical challenges; they’re choices. Saying it’s “too complicated” is just elite-speak for “we don’t want to.” After all, who voluntarily dismantles a house they still live in?
As for Japan and its World War II-era “comfort women”—well, what’s a few thousand lives shattered by military sexual slavery when you’ve got an Olympics to host? In 1995, Tokyo conjured up the Asian Women’s Fund—essentially reparations by proxy. It offered payouts without government involvement, apologies with just enough plausible deniability, and ensured that Japan’s hands remained technically clean. Many survivors saw through it, of course. You can’t outsource moral responsibility and expect closure.
Survivor Yong Soo Lee’s blunt honesty—“I can never forgive what happened to me”—isn’t a call for vengeance. It’s a call for recognition. Not from some nameless fund, but from the very system that denied her dignity. Her story is a reminder: reparations are not about the past—they’re about the present refusal to acknowledge it.
So here we are, spinning in circles. Reparations remain both a pipe dream and a PR tool. They’re dangled in speeches, shelved in policy, and rolled out when a nation needs a moment of introspection without consequence. Why take responsibility when it’s so much easier to let the past stay buried—until, of course, someone dares to ask the inconvenient question again. And when that happens, we can always go back to talking about the weather.
By Dalal Abu Diab 12B