Throughout the 20th century there were frequent apologies and claims for reparations for the atrocities committed in the context of the relations between peoples and countries, as illustrated by Germany's initiatives with regard to the Holocaust and by the US response in the case of the Japanese Americans kept under arrest during World War II.
In the 21st century there has been an insistent (and not always heeded) demand for apologies regarding atrocities, violence and crimes committed in the more or less distant past under European colonialism. Sometimes the demands for an apology are accompanied by claims for reparation or compensation. Here are a few examples.
In 2004, the German government recognized the violence committed against the people of Namibia in the genocidal killing of 65,000 Herero, who had revolted against their colonizers in 1904. In 2018, the Namibian government demanded a formal apology and compensation for those acts, which the German government refused to do. On a visit to Libya in 2008, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi formally apologized to the Libyan people for the "unhealed wounds" inflicted by the thirty years of Italian colonization and pledged compensation in the form of a $5 billion investment.
