PREVIEW
Landmark resolution classes the trans-Atlantic slave trade as ‘gravest crime’ against humanity, urging apologies and reparations
Ghana and the African Union have secured a diplomatic triumph after winning a sweeping majority in the United Nations for a resolution drafted by Accra calling for reparations for slavery (Dispatches, 16/3/26, Mahama to take reparations campaign to the UN). Argentina, Israel and the United States were the only votes against the resolution which obtained 123 votes in favour. Former colonising and slave-trading countries such as Britain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain were among the 52 countries that abstained. Member states of the European Union accounted for half the abstentions. The resolution, which is not legally binding, urges countries involved in the slave trade to begin ‘good-faith dialogue on reparatory justice, including a full and formal apology, measures of restitution, compensation’.
It also insisted that ‘wrongful acts entail a duty of reparation’. The EU cited the clause describing slavery as ‘the gravest crime against humanity’ as the reason for its abstention. Gabriella Michaelidou, the Cypriot deputy UN ambassador, whose government holds the EU’s six-month presidency, warned that such phraseology could imply ‘a hierarchy among atrocity crimes.’
Britain’s representative and Chargé d’Affaires to the UN, James Kariuki, who is of Kenyan heritage, made a similar argument on behalf of Whitehall. Michaelidou added that the EU rejected the premise of retroactive reparations as did Britain (AC Vol 64 No 25, The case for reparations).
The resolution made headlines in the US where the campaign for reparations gained momentum following the ‘Black Lives Matter’ campaign and murder of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman in 2020.
The US Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dan Negrea said the Trump administration opposed the text and ‘does not recognise a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.’ And unusually in a UN debate, Negrea made several partisan points about how much the Trump administration has done for the African-American community in the US.
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