The Open Society Foundations (OSF), founded by George Soros and currently chaired by his son Alex Soros, has played a major role in lobbying efforts to extract slavery reparations from Britain. Drawing from its roughly $23 billion endowment, the organization has directed hundreds of thousands of dollars toward groups advocating for compensation.
The reparations push gained formal momentum in 2014 through the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), and broadened in 2023 to encompass African countries—despite the fact that many African rulers profited handsomely from the international slave trade, and continued to practice it at home until being forced to give it up by the West in general and Britain in particular.
OSF has helped facilitate collaboration between Caribbean and African advocates and officials, including by organizing a “study tour” in Barbados and by backing a significant summit in Ghana. That gathering contributed to a unified declaration committing to seek remedies for supposed historical injustices.
OSF’s support has included grants such as $350,000 to the University of the West Indies in 2023 to promote awareness of “reparatory justice” and foster stronger Caribbean-Africa ties, along with $300,000 to Ghana’s foreign ministry that same year. In addition, the foundation helped organize a 2024 summit in New York, where the leader of Barbados called for the Church of England to provide reparations for its role in slavery.
Bolstered by this backing, the African Union has advanced its own reparations initiative and is exploring legal avenues to apply pressure on Britain. The OSF-funded African Judges and Jurists Forum has focused on crafting legal arguments and cases to push the reparations agenda.