For centuries, Africans were enslaved. This was “the gravest crime against humanity”, declared the United Nations General Assembly. Not all countries voted in favour of the resolution.
Ghana’s President John Mahama had introduced the resolution, which we previously reported on in the newsletter. Among other things, it calls for the free “immediate and unconditional return” of cultural artefacts and works of art to their countries of origin. It also calls for concrete steps towards reparations, including financial compensation, debt relief and development aid. A total of 123 states in the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour; the United States and Argentina, among others, voted against the text, while Germany abstained. The resolution is not legally binding but is regarded as historic.
The trade in enslaved people from Africa and their racially justified enslavement must be regarded as “the gravest crime against humanity due to the profound rupture in world history, its scale, its duration, its systemic nature, its brutality and its consequences that persist to this day”, the resolution text states. “The transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity that struck at the very core of what it means to be human, tore families apart and destroyed communities,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
US representative Dan Negrea described the resolution as highly problematic, stating that the organisation was not founded to advance specific interests and agendas or to “establish international niche observances”. He also justified the vote against it by referring to the principle of the non-retroactivity of laws. There is no legal entitlement to reparations for historical injustices that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred, Negrea argued. United Kingdom, Ghana’s former colonial power, also rejects calls for reparations on similar grounds.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries in particular, millions of people were forcibly taken from Africa and brutally exploited as slaves, mainly in North and South America and the Caribbean. It is estimated that more than two million people died during the transatlantic crossing alone. The slave trade was abolished in United Kingdom in 1807. In the United States, slavery was officially abolished in all states in 1865. With the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, slavery was banned worldwide in 1948.
