In 2023 the AU mandated Ghana to lead its struggle to secure reparations for “Global Africans” — people of African descent living on or off the continent who share a common ancestral identity, culture and consciousness — under the energetic leadership of Nana Akufo-Addo, who built strong bridges with the Caribbean.
Last week his successor, John Mahama, presented a historic resolution to the UN General Assembly that declared transatlantic slavery — in which 12-million to 15-million enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas and the Caribbean between 1450 and 1888 — as “the gravest crime against humanity”.
This sordid commerce was led by governments, slavers and businesses from Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. The UN resolution described the transatlantic slave trade as “a systematic, widespread and institutionalised regime of violence, exploitation, dehumanisation and racial subjugation”, noting its consequences included “the large-scale destruction of African societies and the entrenchment of racialised inequalities that continue to structure international relations”.
The document further called for contributions to be made to reparations-related programmes of the AU and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), a formal apology, and measures of restitution, rehabilitation and compensation.
After seven rounds of tortuous negotiations, the resolution was finally adopted by 123 out of 193 UN members (63%), with 52 states abstaining. A solid Afro-Caribbean bloc was joined by states across Latin America (lobbied by Brazil) and Asia.
The Europeans — the most culpable for transatlantic slavery and colonialism and thus most responsible for paying reparations — abstained, while the “terrible triplets” of America, Argentina and Israel voted against, led by a nativist US President Donald Trump administration, which has sought to erase America’s 250-year history of slavery.
The UN document pointedly reminded European governments of their condemnation of slavery in 1815 as “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality”. Before this resolution previous UN resolutions in 2006 and 2007 had simply noted the commemoration of 200 years of the abolition of the slave trade, and the remembrance of its victims.
This was the first UN resolution to declare transatlantic slavery to have been a crime against humanity, and to seek redress for its continuing structural consequences involving persistent socioeconomic disparities between Africa, the Caribbean and the West, and within black communities across the Americas (40% of African slaves went to Brazil and Cuba).
The conference also championed the inclusion of the history and contributions of Africans in international educational curricula; and fully integrating black communities across the globe into public services while increasing social services to them.
Last year the AU declared a Decade of Action on Reparations (2026 to 2035). Africa and its diaspora have thus sought to translate this moral crusade into concrete action through the UN resolution, which traced the contemporary history of the black Atlantic’s anti-slavery efforts.
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) had consistently pursued reparations (including monetary compensation and debt annulment) and restitution (particularly of cultural artefacts pillaged during slavery and colonialism) for historical crimes and mass atrocities.
This culminated in the OAU’s 1993 Abuja Proclamation on Reparations. The 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban described transatlantic slavery as “abhorrent barbarism” that “should always have been” a crime against humanity. The conference also championed the inclusion of the history and contributions of Africans in international educational curricula; and fully integrating black communities across the globe into public services while increasing social services to them.
Caricom’s 2014 10-point plan pushed for investments by European slaving nations in the region’s health, education and cultural sectors, and technology transfer. The 2023 AU Accra Proclamation on Reparations, involving close collaboration with Caricom, further crafted concrete policy recommendations for the Common African Position on Reparations & Healing, an Afro-Caribbean programme of action, and an African Caribbean Joint Mechanism on Reparative Justice.
With this unprecedented UN resolution Global Africa continues its dogged efforts to build a viable international reparations movement to redress one of the worst crimes in world history.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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