SOCIAL anthropologist Professor Barry Chevannes is to chair the Reparations Commission being established by Government to formulate Jamaica’s position on the issue.

The announcement was made at Wednesday’s post-cabinet press briefing at Jamaica House, by Minister of Information, Culture, Youth and Sports Olivia ‘Babsy’ Grange.Grange said that the commission will recommend, “the form or forms that reparation may take, bearing in mind, but not limited by the recommendations of the 2001 conference against racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance, and taking into account the social, moral, cultural, economic and international factors.”

She added that the commission will be required to provide a report of its deliberations and recommendations for her, as minister of culture, within 18 months after its first meeting.

“In the recommendations, we are asking for the following to be established – that the commission receives submissions, hear testimonies, evaluate and research studies, as well as engage in dialogue with relevant interest groups, legal and academic experts and undertake public consultations, as necessary, with the aim of guiding a national approach to reparations,” she explained.

The recommendations will also address diplomatic initiatives, security considerations, education and public information required.

Chevannes, author of the book Rastafari: Roots and Ideology, will also guide the commission’s deliberations on the issue of repatriation, which has been added to the reparations debate by rastafarians.

He chaired the National Commission on Ganja which did similar work on the issue of legalising ganja, as well as the Council Board of the Institute of Jamaica, the Violence Prevention Alliance, the Justice Reform Task Force and the Caricom Commission on Youth Development.

Grange noted that the issue was given a new lease on life in mid-2007, when current Minister of Transport and Works Mike Henry moved a resolution to have Parliament debate it.

A joint select committee of Parliament was selected to study the issue, but that committee became defunct when Parliament was prorogued that year, prior to the 2007 general election. The new JLP administration decided, instead, to appoint a national commission on reparation.

Henry, who was also at the briefing, applauded the move.

Grange said that the Cabinet submission covered Jamaican descendants of slaves living in the Diaspora, as well.

The secretariat will be headed by Tanya Batson-Savage of the ministry. Other members will be announced as soon as their response is ascertained, the minister said.