Compensation payments for damage done in war by a defeated enemy. They were a condition of the armistice for World War I, and part of the Versailles Peace Settlement. After World War II reparations took the form of Allied occupation of Germany and Japan. Britain, France, and the USA ended reparation collections in 1952. In the aftermath of the Gulf War (1991), the UN Compensation Commission obliged Iraq, whose invasion of Kuwait had precipitated the conflict, to pay reparations to war victims.