Between 1904 and 1908, German soldiers and settler colonists killed about half of all Nama people and over 80% of the Herero ethnic group. On May 28, 2021, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas acknowledged that Germany committed genocide in what is today Namibia. Maas also announced that Germany would pay Namibia roughly $1.3 billion to answer for these crimes. Many refer to this gesture as reparations.
Meanwhile, in the United States, reparations to Black Americans for slavery are gaining traction. Universities, including Georgetown and Virginia Theological Seminary, along with a few cities such as Asheville, North Carolina, have started reparations programs. In April, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to advance a bill exploring reparations at the national level.
I argue that past atrocities do not end when the physical violence comes to an end. The violence continues to affect the social, cultural and economic lives of those targeted far into the future – making societies sometimes turn to reparations.
The first major reparations program began in 1952, when 23 Jewish organizations formed the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany to seek redress for Holocaust victims and their families. The Claims Conference has gone on to distribute over $80 billion dollars in reparations.
In the United States, when people hear the term “reparations,” they often think of direct payments of money. But there are many forms that reparations can take. “Compensation” is the direct payment of money. “Restitution” is the return of rights and property. “Rehabilitation” includes things like giving victims mental and physical health care.
Purely symbolic initiatives may feel empty to victims. Material reparations without public and visible symbolic gestures may feel insufficient. So typically, a successful reparations program includes both.
But so far the Germany-Namibia program, as well as many U.S. efforts, seem to be focusing on material compensation alone. In doing so, they ignore two other important principles of transitional justice: “complementarity,” or the idea that transitional justice works best when multiple tools are used at once, and “consultation.”
Mass atrocities arise from complex social and political processes that target certain identity groups. So addressing all of their legacies successfully requires many different policy initiatives working hand in hand, or complementarity.
In Germany’s case, the offer of reparations to Namibia is not being complemented by other measures to deal with the past. In fact, the government refuses to call the payments “reparations” at all and prefers to call it “development aid.”
When reparations measures aren’t met with initiatives responding to the structural causes of violence, they can be perceived as “blood money,” as victims believe accepting the payment means giving up their right to justice. It may also cause victims to question their own right to redress. But when accompanied by efforts to seek justice and reform the institutions that violated victims’ rights, I argue, reparations can be a starting point for rebuilding trust and community.
In Chile, tens of thousands of victims were tortured during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship for being “political subversives.” Additionally, thousands were disappeared. When victims and their families sought reparations after the dictatorship ended, the government began a thorough consultation process that led to creative solutions.
In the U.S., Georgetown and the Jesuit priests who run it have pledged $100 million as reparations to the descendants of the enslaved people sold to finance the university. But some descendants have criticized Georgetown’s consultation process. One descendant told the news outlet Quartz that only around 50 of the thousands of descendants were actually involved in the consultation process.
The modern history of reparations is only a few decades old, but it already demonstrates that reparations are always about more than the money. If the process includes compensation, but ignores complementarity and consultation, the effort may fail to truly answer for the past.
But when all three principles are central, reparations can mean far more than money in someone’s pocket. They can contribute to repairing the social fabric that has been torn apart by mass violence.
