UN votes to describe slave trade as ‘gravest crime against humanity’ | Slavery

The United Nations on Wednesday voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs.” The landmark resolution was backed by the African Union and the Caribbean Community.

Resolution Passes with Support from African Union, Caribbean Community

Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, proposed the resolution, stating: “Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”

The vote tally was 123 states in favor, with Argentina, Israel and the US voting against. A total of 52 nations abstained, including the UK and members of the European Union.

UK Disagrees with Resolution’s Framing

James Kariuki, the UK chargé d’affaires to the UN, said Britain continues to disagree with fundamental propositions of the text and believes it is important “not to create a hierarchy of historical atrocities.” He added, “No single set of atrocities should be regarded as more or less significant than another.”

Simultaneously, British MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy presented a petition to the House of Commons, advocating for a state apology from the UK for its role in the enslavement and colonization of Africans. The petition argued that many current global challenges, including geopolitical instability, racism, inequality, underdevelopment, and climate breakdown, are rooted in the legacies of enslavement and empire.

Historical Context and Impact of the Slave Trade

For four centuries, seven European nations, including the UK, enslaved and trafficked over 15 million Africans across the Atlantic. Abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries coined the term “crime against humanity” to describe the scale of the chattel slavery. Historians have also linked wealth generated from enslavement to the mass industrialization of the west.

Jasmine Mickens, a postgraduate student of history and government at Harvard University, emphasized that framing the transatlantic slave trade as merely a “trade” distorts the reality of the situation, stating, “It was not a consensual joint business enterprise.”

Ghana has been leading efforts across Africa and the Caribbean to seek reparatory justice, pushing for updated terminology to reflect the lasting impact of chattel slavery. Experts involved in drafting the resolution say it aims to achieve “political recognition at the highest level” for this dark period in history.

Kyeretwie Osei, the head of the economic, social and cultural council at the AU, clarified that the resolution’s intent is not to establish a hierarchy of crimes, but rather to “properly situate that particular chapter in history” and acknowledge its world-altering impact, creating the foundation for subsequent atrocities.

Osei explained that the resolution recognizes the “chattelisation of human beings which essentially reduces them to property that can be sold or inherited” and the fact that the status of enslavement could be passed down through birth.

The UN first acknowledged slavery as a crime at a 2001 conference against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance in Durban, South Africa. However, Panashe Chigumadzi, a historian and rapporteur for the AU’s committee of experts on reparations, noted that the Durban conference had limitations, framing slavery as a “retroactive moral judgment rather than a continuous legal reality.”

Chigumadzi stated that the AU framework establishes that the trafficking of enslaved Africans marked a definitive break in world history, transitioning from localized feudal regimes to a modern, racially-based capitalist system, fundamentally altering the fates of people worldwide.

While the resolution is not legally binding, it is expected to facilitate further progress in the fight for reparations, a cause scholars and some politicians say has been hampered by the rise of rightwing movements. The AU has been working to codify chattel slavery as a crime requiring not only apologies but also reparatory justice.

Mahama also lamented the ongoing erasure of Black history in the US, citing increasing censorship of teaching the “truth of slavery, segregation and racism” in schools, calling these policies a “template for other governments and some private institutions.”