Above: Barbados Culture Minister Stephen Lashley (Photo: UN Video)

By Sharon Austin

Barbados Culture Minister Stephen Lashley has called for “meaningful and innovative reparations” globally for people of African descent as past and continuing victims of racial discrimination.

Lashley was speaking at a one-day United Nations High-Level Meeting to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action in New York.

Lashley said funding targeted at economic development, as well as resources intended to support social programmes.

“Such programmes are being implemented in Barbadian schools and communities, and they investigate, identify and counter those messages and images that negate the value of the knowledge and culture of people of African descent by building awareness of the fundamental contribution of African peoples to world civilization,” he said.

Lashley also called for the allocation of resources to fund national, regional and international research centres aimed at developing new conceptual tools for understanding the nature of racial discrimination.

“In the Caribbean, the site of the longest and deepest social experiment in building societies based on a complex of racial shades [is] the University of the West Indies [and it] can be one such centre to study ethnic relations,” he said.

–Barbados Information Agency