UN votes to declare transatlantic slave trade crime against humanity

The United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognise the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity.

Ghana, on Wednesday, introduced the resolution to the assembly and urged the contribution of a reparations fund.

The country also asked UN members involved to consider apologising for the slave trade.

According to Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Ablakwa, the reparations fund will be used to repair the damage caused by the slave trade.

“We are demanding compensation – and let us be clear, African leaders are not asking for money for themselves.

“We want justice for the victims and causes to be supported, educational and endowment funds, skills training funds,” he said.

The resolution received overwhelming support at the general assembly, with 123 member states voting in favour.

Only three countries voted against it: Argentina, Israel, and the US, while 52 countries — primarily European countries— abstained from voting. This includes Britain, Portugal, and Spain, who were, arguably, most guilty of the slave trade and colonialism. Nigeria and other African countries voted in support of the resolution.

The transatlantic slave trade represents one of the darkest chapters in human history, marked by the systematic exploitation, displacement, and dehumanisation of millions of Africans.

An estimated 15 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many died during the Middle Passage, while survivors were subjected to forced labour and systemic abuse in the West.

Mr Ablakwa declared that “many generations continue to suffer the exclusion, the racism because of the transatlantic slave trade which has left millions separated from the continent and impoverished.”

The resolution noted that the impact of slavery persists in the form of racial inequalities and underdevelopment, “affecting Africans and people of African descent in all parts of the world.”

It also called for the return of cultural artefacts stolen during the colonial era to their countries of origin.

“We want a return of all those looted artefacts, which represent our heritage, our culture, and our spiritual significance. All those artefacts looted for many centuries into the colonial era ought to be returned,” Mr Ablakwa said.

The BBC reports that the African Union and Caribbean community also backed the resolution.

Ghana’s President John Mahama described the resolution as “historic” and “a safeguard against forgetting.”

What Officials said

Mr Mahama earlier spoke ahead of the vote, on behalf of the 54-member African Group, the largest regional bloc at the UN.

“Today, we come together in solemn solidarity to affirm truth and pursue a route to healing and reparative justice,” he said.

For more than 400 years, millions of people were stolen from Africa.

They were put in shackles and shipped to the New World to toil in cotton fields and sugar and coffee plantations under scorching heat and the crack of the whip.

They were denied their basic humanity and even their own names, forced to endure generations of exploitation with repercussions that reverberate today including persistent anti-Black racism and discrimination.

The resolution emphasised “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history”.

It also noted the scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialised regimes of labour, property and capital.”

It affirmed the importance of addressing historical wrongs affecting Africans and people of the diaspora in a manner that promotes justice, human rights, dignity and healing.

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The resolution also emphasised that claims for reparations represent a concrete step towards remedy.

“The slave trade and slavery stand among the gravest violations of human rights in human history,” UN General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock said.

Ms Baerbock added that slavery was “an affront to the very principles enshrined in the Charter of our United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, themselves born, in part, from these injustices of the past.”

The countries where enslaved Africans were taken from also suffered “a hollowing out” having lost entire generations who potentially could have helped them to prosper, she said.

“It was, to put it in colder terms, mass resource extraction,” Ms Baerbock stressed.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for confronting slavery’s lasting legacies of inequality and racism.

“Now we must remove the persistent barriers that prevent so many people of African descent from exercising their rights and realising their potential,” he said.

“We must commit, fully and without hesitation, to human rights, equality, and the inherent worth of every person.”

Mr Guterres urged countries to drive action to eradicate systemic racism, ensure reparatory justice and accelerate inclusive development, marked by equal access to education, health, employment, housing, and a safe environment.

“This includes commitments to respect African countries’ ownership of their own natural resources.

“And steps to ensure their equal participation and influence in the global financial architecture and the UN Security Council.”

Speaking on why the US voted against the resolution, the US representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, Dan Negrea, said the US “does not recognise a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”