Time to pay up? Reparations and global development challenges

Reparations have become a popular demand worldwide, in various different contexts. The rise in reparations demands raises practical and theoretical problems. Practically, it is unclear when and how governments and other institutions should respond to reparations remands, and what role monetary payments should play therein. Theoretically, it is unclear whether reparations are mostly a political phenomenon, or whether the payment claims they include fundamentally redefine the meaning of money and the basis of economic exchange. After all, our economic activity is usually meant to improve our lives now and in the future, rather than making up for shortcomings of the past.

The REPAIR project answers these questions by analysing new and understudied reparations claims. It builds a database of reparations payments worldwide since WWII, and it compares three new kinds of reparations claims in depth. These include reparations for infectious disease outbreaks, climate change, and nuclear poisoning. REPAIR asks 1. How reparations payments are established, implemented and received 2. What these payments teach us about reparations in development, from an economic, moral and political perspective 3. What kind of wealth transfer reparations constitute, and what this tells us about the “reparative aspects” of economic life more generally.

REPAIR will have significant scientific and policy impact. It analyses a new and important set of reparations cases and asks the novel question what kind of wealth transfer they constitute. Thereby it hopes to push the limits of our understanding of economic life more broadly. REPAIR also provides policy makers and activists with comparative insights that only the social sciences can provide. It illustrates when and how reparations are best set up, how substantive reparations payments are, and what main methodologies exist to establish them. This provides policy makers and activists with more options for how to respond to reparations demands.

A Research Assistant was hired by 1 March 2024 and a PhD student, a Postdoctoral Researcher and second Research Assistant were hired by 1 September 2024.

The team aligned on and refined the research questions in a Kick-off Workshop in September, 2025, and, together with the board, at a Pre-field Workshop in May, 2025. We also organized an interdisciplinary, hybrid lecture series on reparations in development, watched by over 1000 people. All 10 lectures can be found on the project website (www.reparationsresearch.eu) where they will be archived for 10 years, and on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@reparationsres). We also organized a hybrid theory reading group, attracting participants from Colombia, South Africa and the United States.

REPAIR established ongoing research collaborations with the State University of Haiti and the University of Edinburgh. We co-organized a conference on ‘Transnational Conversations - Heritage, Memory, Climate, and Reparatory Justice in the Caribbean, Europe, and Beyond’ at Leiden University in October 2025, and a panel at the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes’ IOB Conference for June 2026.

Work Package (WP) 1 on reparations worldwide completed the data collection and analysis of a global reparations payments database (forthcoming in January 2026) and submitted a first article summarizing the database methodology and main findings to the Journal of Peace Research.

WP 2 on pandemic outbreaks published a book chapter on research methods in corporate settings, two scientific articles on development financing and a working paper and two blogs on the same topic.

WP3 on Climate Change has had a first article accepted in the Journal Anthropology in Action (forthcoming, autumn 2026). The WP leader Dr Mausumi Moran Chetia participated in COP 29, joined the University of the South Pacific in Fiji as a Visiting Researcher, obtained a research permit from Fiji’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and from the Ministry of iTaukei Affairs, and conducted field research from September to November in Fiji. She wrote a blog post for the organization called ‘the Loss and Damage Collaboration’ (August 2025) and has joined the University of Amsterdam’s Climate Centre ‘SEVEN’.

For WP 4 on nuclear harm, the PhD student Tabitha Hrynick obtained departmental fieldwork permission within the standard timeframe of 8 months. She has been granted visiting scholar status at the University of New Mexico, started fieldwork in partnership with a number of grassroots organizations and published a blog on the interplay of art and activism.

WP 5 on theory sent off a first article draft on the economic anthropology of reparations to the journal Economy and Society in November 2026.

REPAIR members presented work in 13 scientific settings, around the world.

The PI served on the scientific board of a major academic conference on reparations (see above), and helped Prof. Benoît Falisse at the University of Edinburgh put together a successful application for an ERC consolidator grant on the “Afterlives of Reparations” (awarded in 2025).

REPAIR has also informed activists and policy makers. The PI has provided policy advice on development financing modalities to the multilateral institution UNITAID (October and July, 2025), the OECD and consultancy company IodPark (December 2024). He has presented on ‘Compensation Payments for Transgenerational Harm’, at a reparations workshop co-organized by the International Criminal Court (November 2024) and was interviewed on global health financing by the Lancet (October 2025). Ms Hrynick exchanged in a call on reparations with the Head of International Advocacy and Policy of the Global Survivor’s Fund (April 2025). She also took part in a knowledge exchange with New Mexican youth activists on how to incorporate reparations into a nuclear awareness youth curriculum (October 2025) and she supports an oral history and archiving project led by an Indigenous community in New Mexico about nuclear harm. She equally disseminates a documentary about reparations for New Mexico downwinders.

To increase uptake among scientists, we have planned 6 hybrid REPAIR lectures for 2026, and are working on further publications, conference participation and research collaborations.

To increase uptake the general public, we will engage in two main activities. First, we will apply to a Proof of Concept grant to found the Centre for Reparative Finance, a consulting company that commercializes insights into reparative finance for law firms, governments and corporations, and works pro-bono with NGOs and activists, to improve reparations payments worldwide.

Second, we will put together an online and real-life photo exhibition of reparations claimants around the world. Its main goal is to convey the diversity and unity of restorative justice claims around the world. The exhibition will feature 6 reparations case studies in a mix of portraits and documentary style photographs and feature work by local photographers and the PI for each site. It will appear in Amsterdam, and in the field sites where the pictures are taken.

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REPAIR (Time to pay up? Reparations and global development challenges)

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