King Charles has referred a landmark slavery reparations petition from Jamaica to a high-level UK appeals court for legal advice, Jamaica’s culture minister announced in parliament on Tuesday.
Referring to the move as a “really big deal”, Olivia Grange told Jamaica’s MPs the monarch had confirmed that their legal questions have been passed on to the London-based privy council – the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.
The petition seeks guidance on three questions: whether the forced transport of Africans to Jamaica was lawful; whether it constituted a crime against humanity; and whether Britain is under an obligation to provide restitution for slavery and its enduring consequences.
“Indeed we went fearless and boldly into this chapter when we petitioned the king on Monday, September ۷, ۲۰۲۶ – one day after the ۲۴۵th anniversary of the commemoration of the Zong massacre, an event that captures the barbarity of chattel enslavement,” Grange said in parliament.
“The king could have ignored us. The king could have delayed responding to us. The king could have made a decision not to refer the questions to the privy council, or he could make a decision to refer the questions,” she said, before adding “King Charles has referred the petition filed on the ۷th of September, ۲۰۲۶, on behalf of the people of Jamaica to the Judicial Committee of the privy council.”
Jamaica had activated a rarely used mechanism in the Judicial Committee Act ۱۸۳۳, which allows the king to refer questions of “legal or constitutional nature” to the privy council when they cannot be resolved through ordinary courts, according to the country’s legal counsels.
The minister said that taking the matter to the International Court of Justice, was not an option for Jamaica.
“The United Kingdom has placed specific reservations on the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ which prevent the Court from adjudicating on disputes between the United Kingdom and the government of any other country which is or has been a Member of the Commonwealth”.
A privy council opinion would not compel the UK government to pay reparations, but Jamaican officials believe it could shape negotiations and legal options and set a precedent for other Commonwealth nations seeking reparations.
Earlier this month, Grange led a Jamaican delegation to London to officially lodge the petition. While in the UK, the group, lawyers and members of the country’s national council on reparation met diaspora communities, MPs, church leaders and cultural institutions – among them the British Museum, from which Jamaica is seeking the return of artefacts taken during colonial rule.
Tuesday’s announcement follows the Caricom Regional Conference on Reparations, which took place in Barbados last week. Officials at the conference said that Caribbean nations are drawing up a multi-pronged “action plan” with legal options to push the UK into negotiating a decades-long slavery reparations deal.
Leaders in the region are hoping the UK would agree to targeted and constructive negotiation talks at upcoming Commonwealth and UN summits, but they are ready to take the matter to international courts if Britain continues to resist diplomatic options.
Speaking at the conference, Prof Sir Hilary Beckles, the chair of the CRC, said reparations was a matter of justice, adding that countries in the region were forced to create viable democracies “out of the mess” of colonialism, which was still having an impact today.
He said: “When Jamaica took its petition to the UK, we had to surround that petition with the fact that when Jamaica became independent in ۱۹۶۲, ۸۰% of the black people in Jamaica could not read or write. After ۳۰۰ years of British colonisation, they moved into independence with ۸۰% illiteracy. How do you build a modern nation, not even a competitive economy, with ۸۰% illiteracy?”
Earlier this month, a spokesperson for Andy Burnham reiterated the British government’s long‑held position that “the UK does not and will not pay reparations”.
Grange told parliament that the country is “awaiting directions from the Judicial Committee of the privy council as to the next steps to be taken in the case. And the attorney general is preparing to deal with the case”.
