Bangladesh, Jan. 2 -- For decades, the demand for colonial reparations in Africa existed in a carefully managed space of Western comfort. It was acknowledged just enough to appear morally sensitive, yet dismissed as impractical, anachronistic, or legally impossible. European capitals perfected a language of regret without responsibility-issuing symbolic apologies, commissioning museum exhibits, or funding limited development programs that carefully avoided the word “reparations.” By the end of 2025, that era effectively ended in Algiers.

With the adoption of the Algiers Declaration, the African Union (AU) has shifted the reparations debate from moral protest to structured legal confrontation. Emerging from the International C...