Jamaica is taking its reparations campaign directly to King Charles, asking the monarch to seek legal clarification on Britain’s responsibility for slavery and its continuing consequences.

Culture Minister Olivia Grange was due to present the petition to Charles on Monday after arriving in London with members of Jamaica’s National Council on Reparations. The petition asks the King, who is Jamaica’s head of state, to seek advice from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

The questions before the committee include whether the forced transportation of Africans to Jamaica was lawful, whether slavery constituted a crime against humanity and whether Britain has an obligation to provide restitution for slavery and its enduring effects.

Grange said a response from the Privy Council would be important to advancing Jamaica’s reparations claims.

“We’re a resilient people,” Grange told the Guardian, pointing to Jamaica’s recovery from Hurricane Melissa. But she said the country continues to contend with problems inherited from slavery.

Between the 15th and 19th centuries, more than 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped, forcibly transported to the Americas and sold into slavery.

Jamaica established a national reparations mechanism in 2009, making it the first Caribbean country to do so, according to Grange. She said the effort seeks to address economic and social disadvantages that have persisted since slavery and continue to affect the country’s ability to confront challenges including the climate crisis.

“We have inherited systems that continue to deprive our country and our people,” she said, citing lasting effects in education, health and diet.

Ralph Gonsalves, former prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and a key figure in the creation of the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission, said the consequences of slavery remain evident today.

“The present is very much the past,” Gonsalves said Sunday, linking contemporary underdevelopment to the history of Indigenous dispossession and African enslavement.

He also argued that European countries accumulated wealth through the exploitation of enslaved Africans.

Jamaica’s initiative comes as reparations advocates prepare for a series of international events. A Caribbean reparations conference is scheduled for Barbados later this month, while campaigners are planning advocacy at the United Nations General Assembly in late September and the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Antigua in November, where Charles is expected to attend.

The campaign reflects growing international demands for Britain and other former colonial powers to acknowledge the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as crimes and participate in reparatory justice efforts.

For Jamaica, the petition represents another step in a longstanding effort to establish how historical exploitation continues to shape the country’s economic and social realities.

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