Send the People's Voice to the Accra Conference

The Accra Reparations Conference will convene from November 14 to November 18, 2023.

The Conference “will constitute the first ever African Committee of Experts on reparations. The Committee, drawn from relevant fields including law, will be established for the purpose of developing a Common African Position on Reparations and incorporate therein, an African Reparatory Programme of Action.”

Moreover, “The conference will convene political leaders from the African continent and the Caribbean region, policymakers at the global, continental, regional and national levels, academics and scholars, civil society actors and relevant stakeholders from around the continent and the global African Diaspora for substantive deliberations, the sharing of best practices, and the development of actionable strategies to promote and advance a continental initiative for reparatory justice.”

Siphiwe Baleka needs to attend the Accra Reparations Conference and be considered for the African Committee of Experts on Reparations. He is definitely the people’s legal voice when it comes to global African reparatory justice. His body of work on international legal issues pertaining to people of African Descent and specifically their Right to Return to their ancestral homeland has been of a high standard for more than two decades. His recommendations in 2003 were adopted in 2017 and granted recognition and permanent residence to the Rastafari repatriates in Ithiopia. In 2005/6 Siphiwe Baleka became the Coordinator of the AU 6th Region Education Campaign and played an instrumental role in the first effort to elect the twenty diaspora representatives to the AU ECOSOCC . In 2019, Siphiwe Baleka published The Sovereign Claim of Guine Against Slavery discussing the contest of laws existing between sovereign powers at the moment when his ancestors came into contact with European Christians and revealed the circumstances that led up to the Portuguese invasion of the West Coast of Africa. Then, as President of the Balanta B’urassa History & Genealogy Society in America (BBHAGSIA), Siphiwe Baleka started a campaign to make the Apostolic edict known as the Dum Diversas (June 18, 1452) recognized as the official start of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and to establish the status of its victims under international law as prisoners of war due reparations, including repatriation and citizenship in their African homelands. Later in 2021, he was recruited by East Africa’s Representative to the AU ECOSOCC to join the African Diaspora Alliance (AfDA) Committee to Draft or Compile the Framework to Incorporate Diaspora into AU ECOSOCC (to table to the 3rd General Assembly ). He was asked again this year to consult with the AU ECOSOCC Framework development legal team.

Most recently, he has been acknowledged by civil society as the strategist that is leading the ICJ Advisory Opinion strategy adopted by PFPAD. Recently, more than fifty activists, organizational leaders, academics, lawyers and everyday people signed a letter stating, “We, therefore, take this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to this ICJ initiative and to make absolutely clear that our Brother Siphiwe Baleka of the Balanta B’urassa Society must represent us at the highest level of engagement with the ICJ. . . . We the undersigned representatives of civil society therefore reaffirm our commitment to this ICJ initiative and recommend that Siphiwe Baleka be supported in all matters relating to its furtherance on our behalf;”

At the July 2023 Pan African Roots-Synergy Maputo Roundtable (PARSMR) panel with Dr. Eric Phillips entitled VISION STATEMENTS ON THE GLOBAL CASE FOR REPARATORY JUSTICE: LEGAL STRUCTURES, MECHANISMS, INSTRUMENTS & MODALITIES, Siphiwe Baleka made the following recommendation:

'Any Global Afrikan Reparatory Justice Strategy seeking reparations from the transAtlantic enslavement of various peoples from Africa must

a) proceed from a historical understanding of the origin and development of uniquely African concepts and systems of law;

b) recognize the conflict of laws that occurred between Africa and Europe when Pope Nicholas V issued the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict, a declaration of “total war” that qualifies it as a crime against humanity with no statute of limitation;

c) proceed from a narrative that in many areas of Africa, slavery was not legal and thus the Dum Diversas Apostolic Edict did not make slavery legal throughout the earth and therefore, the MAAFA was not a transAtlantic slave trade, it was a transAtlantic trafficking of prisoners of war;

d) insist that, in accordance with principles of African law as well as current international law, Global Afrikan Reparatory Justice, the jurisdiction governing adjudication must be the jurisdiction where the crime occurred which, in this case, originated on the African continent.

For his deep knowledge of history and thorough scholarship, particularly concerning the issue of reparations, Afro Descendant self determination and right to return, conceptual contributions, and extraordinary ability to produce complex documents, Siphiwe Baleka is frequently recruited to serve on various committees. His work was used as the principal source for the Presentment to the Holy See in Furtherance of Reparation that was delivered to Bishop Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Pontifical Council of Culture, July 18, 2022. He drafted House Resolution 292 that was adopted by the State of Illinois House of Representatives 103rd General Assembly that calls upon the State to immediately, through its African Descent-Citizens Reparations Commission (ADCRC), provide matrilineal and patrilineal DNA testing through African Ancestry to determine the ancestral lineages and territories of origin of its Black residents so that they can seek citizenship in their ancestral homelands, if so desired and further calls upon the State to become the first to conduct a repatriation census in preparation for honoring President Abraham Lincoln's desire for voluntary repatriation with compensation and to make conducting the repatriation census its immediate priority. Siphiwe Baleka was also a primary drafter of the CIVIL SOCIETY REQUEST TO THE DUTCH STATE: CABINET & PARLIAMENT FOR THE INTEGRATION OF THE DUTCH APOLOGY IN DUTCH LEGISLATION.

Siphiwe Baleka is currently serving as the Coordinator for the 8th Pan African Congress Part 1 called by H.E. Ambassador Arikana Chihombori Quao. His work confronting the United States about "state sanctioned ethnocide", using the framework of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), bringing the US before the Inter American Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) for committing ethnocide and requesting an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Afro Descendants’ status as prisoners of war under the Geneva convention and the necessity of conducting a plebiscite for self determination are all active campaigns that are shifting the narrative to an African-centered reparations agenda and claim.

The Accra Reparations Conference and the proposed African Committee of Experts on Reparations would benefit greatly from Siphiwe Baleka’s rich expertise and experience which stems from a legal training that was provided by the proverbial “path less chosen.”

PLEASE DONATE NOW TO HELP HIM ATTEND.