Esther Stanford-Xosei Bio
Esther Stanford-Xosei is a jurisconsult, community advocate, specialising in the critical legal praxis of ‘law as resistance’ and internationally acclaimed Reparationist. With a proven track record as a law related education and training consultant, Esther has extensive experience of formulating reparative policy and programme interventions as well as developing specialist advocacy services for communities who are survivors of historical and contemporary trauma as a result of systematic violations of their human and peoples’ rights.
Esther has charted new grounds, as an interdisciplinary legal and history scholar-activist in the theory, research and praxis of Pan-Afrikan Reparations for Global Justice. Most notably, she is a long-standing researcher, campaigner, spokesperson and public opinion former on holistic reparations for Afrikans and their descendants worldwide. In this regard, Esther is a founder member and the Co-Vice Chair of the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition of Europe (PARCOE), co-founder of the Global Afrikan Peoples Parliament (GAPP), the Afrikan Reparations Transnational Community of Practice (ARTCoP) and the Europe-Wide NGO Consultative Council on Afrikan Reparations (ENGOCCAR). She is also the official spokesperson for the Afrikan Emancipation Day Reparations March Committee (AEDRMC) which organises the annual 1st August Reparations March in London. In addition, Esther is the co-initiator of the ‘Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide/ Ecocide’ Petition and its campaign (SMWeCGEC). Notably, the SMWeCGEC includes calls for the establishment of All-Party Parliamentary Commissions of Inquiry for Truth & Reparatory Justice at the levels of the Westminster and European Parliaments as well as the establishment of local, national and international benches of the Ubuntukgotla Peoples International Tribunal for Global Justice as an alternative form of dispute resolution and adjudication of Arikan people’s judiciable demands for ‘Stopping the Maangamizi’ (Afrikan hellacaust) and enforcing holistic forms of reparatory justice.
As a result of Esther’s community engaged reparations scholar-activism, she is currently completing PhD action research in history at the University of Chichester on the history of the UK contingent of the International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) which ‘recovers’ the history of Afrikan & Afrikan Diaspora reparations thought, advocacy and social-movement-building in the UK from the 18th century to the present day. On behalf of PARCOE, Esther is currently involved as an activist partner in the founding process of the newly emergent International Network of Scholar Activists on Afrikan Reparations (INOSAAR) which is a collaborative project that is being coordinated by the University of Edinburgh (UK) and Wheelock College (Boston, US).The INOSAAR seeks to unite the efforts of scholars and activists in a combined quest to contribute positively to advancing the question of reparations for Afrikan enslavement and promotes a non-extractive process of ethical scholarship that recognizes the existence of a grassroots International Social Movement for Afrikan Reparations (ISMAR) to which scholars and activists are accountable. Esther is also a co-founder of ISMARA (ISMAR Academy) which in association with the SMWeCGEC and the ARTCoP supports the holistic education and training of reparations cadres in service to advancing the goals of the ISMAR. Such as the establishment of MAAATUBUNTUMAN, the future Pan-Afrikan Union of Communities into a sovereign multi-ethnic superpowerful-state of true participatory democracy of Afrikan people at home and abroad. MAATUBUNTUMAN is meant for Afrikan people all over the World who, since the 1884-5 ‘Scramble for Afrika’ Berlin Congress, have been feeling betrayed, alienated from and unrepresented by the artificial puppet-states of European imperialist balkanization which have been continuing the perpetration of the Maangamizi and its heinous Crimes against Humanity.
Recognition of Esther’s contribution to reparations scholar-activism can be found in a biographical book chapter about her as she in ‘The Most Influential Contemporary Diaspora Leaders’ (2016) edited by Dr Roland Holou as well as inclusion of her activism in the book chapter ‘African Descendant Women and the Global Reparations Movement’ by Professor Adjoa A. Aiyetoro in Black Women and International Law (2015) edited by Dr Jeremy I. Levitt.
For further info about Esther’s Scholar-activism see:
https://reparationsscholaractivist.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/outline-of-my-activist-work-on-reparations/
TONY TOKUNBO ETEKA FERNANDEZ 