The issue of redressing historical wrongs has received much recent attention in political theory, sparking a heated debate over the normative reasons for repairing past injustices. Although questions of justification are important and stimulating, they do not exhaust the range of pressing normative challenges that reparations raise. In this paper, we concentrate on the largely neglected ethical issues arising in the process of devising reparations programmes. When the ethical issues surrounding the design of reparations programmes are ignored, their implementation is likely to leave the injustice in need of repair unscathed and – even worse – compound existing forms of exclusion, power imbalances, and marginalization.
In light of this, we identify three ethical concerns that should be faced while designing reparations programmes. The first issue – call it the problem of political instrumentalization – revolves around a worry often expressed by reparation claimants and victims of injustice, i.e., that reparations can seem to be a way for the governments to legitimize their political power, rather than to achieve justice. This worry seems to be particularly well-founded when the very content of reparations is decided without listening to what “victims” of injustice would regard as an appropriate form of reparation for the injustice they suffered from. We argue that in order not to turn reparations programmes into political tools, such programmes should actively involve claimants.
A second issue – call it the problem of exclusion – also arises from a worry that real world reparations claimants express, and has to do with the documentation and filing process. In devising reparations programs, it is necessary to implement procedures to determine who has a valid claim and put up safeguards against fraud. Yet due to short-sightedness, excessive rule-boundedness, or poor procedural design, individuals with seemingly valid claims may be turned away. Though outcomes like these are not always foreseen, they can also signify bad intentions, and in the extreme case, there may emerge a perceived “hierarchy of victims” based on whose claim is recognized and whose is not.
A final issue – call it the problem of inclusion – arises because, quite naturally, not all individuals with a potential claim to redress will be actively mobilized in making a reparations demand. For some individuals, this is because they themselves are reparations critics, thus it is natural to not be mobilized in making a reparations demand. There may also be conflicts that mirror power imbalances within the group, purely substantive disagreements about what reparative justice demands, indifference, and lack of awareness as to the fact that a reparations movement exists. Do the mobilized individuals who enjoy political clout and legitimacy have standing to claim redress on behalf of the entire group?
The arguments of the paper are made with reference to a wide range of real-world cases.
