Namibian-German genocide negotiations: The legal battles

After years of negotiating between the German and the Namibian governments a draft “reconciliation agreement” about the recognition of the Herero and Nama genocide was concluded in 2021. The majority of the Herero and Nama immediately rejected the agreements, because they didn’t feel adequately represented, a position UN special rapporteurs confirmed in February 2023. In order to prevent the agreement from being signed against their will, Herero and Nama took to court in Windhoek and filed a motion at the High Court.

The German government has so far refused to renegotiate the agreement. The reconciliation is in tatters. With Karina Theurer from Berlin, legal advisor to the lawsuit, and John Nakuta, a human rights legal scholar from Windhoek, we will discuss both the legal avenues and the political ways forward to break the deadlock, and what the future of the reconciliation process might look like.

The event is the kick-off of the series "Colonial Legacy Dialogues", a cooperation between Kampnagel and the Research Centre Hamburg's (Post-)Colonial Legacy, in which scientists and activists discuss the connections and effects of colonialism in Hamburg, Germany and the Global South.