In 1833, slavery was abolished in the island country of Jamaica. Today, Jamaicans are leading a coalition of 14 Caribbean states in a call for Britain to provide reparations for slavery.

The coalition has outlined a list of 10 demands for Britain, France and Holland, including an apology, reparation funds totaling billions of dollars, and assurances that slavery will never be repeated.

During the Transatlantic Slave Trade, more than one million people were imported from Africa to Jamaica; at the time of emancipation, only a little more than 300,000 enslaved people remained.

Perhaps the most important question to ask is: How can you punish a crime against humanity when the crime was legal under that nation’s law?

“If you commit a crime against humanity, you are bound to make amends,” professor Verene Shepherd, chair of Jamaica’s reparations committee, told the Telegraph.

Some international law experts argue that while slavery was inhumane, it was still legal under British law at the time, and have dismissed the coalition’s threat of a lawsuit against Britain.

The larger issue raised is that many public figures, including British prime minister David Cameron, achieved their wealth because of slave labor.

According to the Telegraph, researchers at the University of Birmingham revealed that over £4 trillion was extracted from Jamaica in unpaid slave labor alone, and that majority of the profits went toward the construction of modern Britain.

Similar to American slavery, British slavery has maintained institutionalized power over the descendants of the Caribbean enslaved population. Corruption and high government spending continue to plague Jamaica’s economic growth.

Many arguments arise that slavery reparations are unnecessary because slavery occurred over three centuries ago.

It becomes necessary when those people who were once enslaved enter a free world without a formal education, housing, money or political power. When Jamaica gained full independence from Britain on August 6, 1962, 80 percent of its people were illiterate.

According to the Caribbean Education Foundation website, one out of every two Jamaican primary school children is still illiterate today. Male literacy is also four points below the international average.

Reparations should be distributed among the areas where Caribbean economies have suffered the greatest as a direct result of slavery.

The bigger issue is how to determine who should receive reparations from Britain, when thousands of residents around Jamaica and the other 13 coalition states are descendants of slaves.

It is important for people to remember that in 1990, the US government paid $20,000 war reparations to surviving Japanese-Americans who were sent to internment camps during World War II. These reparations were distributed to Japanese citizens less than 50 years after Japanese Americans were detained in 1942.

Britain owes a debt that is 181 years old.

Jamaica is not late in their demand for slavery reparations. Jamaica is still waiting to be repaid.