The United Nations General Assembly is due to vote on Wednesday on a resolution that would designate the transatlantic African slave trade as "the gravest crime against humanity" – a move supporters describe as historic, and essential to global healing.
Backed strongly by African nations, the initiative at the UN seeks not only to acknowledge the scale and brutality of the centuries-long trade, but also to open the door to deeper conversations around justice and redress.
Advocates say Wednesday's resolution will be a meaningful step forward in recognising the enduring legacy of slavery in shaping modern inequalities.
Ghana’s President John Mahama – one of the most prominent voices pushing for reparations – travelled to UN headquarters this week to rally support.
Addressing delegates on Tuesday, he described the vote as an opportunity for the world to “collectively bear witness” to the suffering of more than 12.5 million Africans who were forcibly taken from their homes over four centuries.
Their “homes, communities, names, families, hopes, dreams, futures and lives” were stripped away, he said – a loss whose echoes are still felt today. Mahama framed the resolution as “a safeguard against forgetting”, warning against attempts to downplay or erase this history, including recent moves in parts of the United States to restrict teaching about slavery and racism.
The draft text formally declares the trafficking of enslaved Africans, and their treatment as racialised chattel, to be the gravest crime against humanity. It also underscores the lasting consequences of that system, pointing to the persistence of racial discrimination and what it describes as neo-colonial dynamics in the modern world.
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Call to confront history
For African Union officials, the language of the resolution is central to its purpose. Amma Adomaa Twum-Amoah, the AU’s Commissioner for Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Development, said clearly naming these events removes any lingering ambiguity about their nature.
“It is to say that what was done to Africans was not a tragic accident of history, but the result of deliberate policies whose legacies structure today’s inequalities,” she said. “Justice begins with calling things by their proper names.”
Beyond recognition, the resolution encourages countries historically involved in the slave trade to engage in processes of restorative justice. Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has been explicit about what that could entail.
“The perpetrators of the transatlantic slave trade are known – the Europeans, the United States of America,” he told reporters. “We expect all of them to formally apologise to Africa and to all people of African descent.”
He pointed to the return of looted cultural artefacts as one possible step, alongside continued efforts to dismantle structural racism and, potentially, financial compensation for affected communities.
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Debate over language and legacy
Not all UN member states are entirely comfortable with the wording of the resolution. Some have raised concerns that describing the slave trade as the “gravest” crime against humanity risks creating a hierarchy of suffering.
Ablakwa rejected that interpretation, stressing that the intention is not to compare or diminish other historical tragedies.
“We are not ranking suffering,” he said. “We are not saying that our pain should be valued more than your pain.”
Rather, he argued, the scale, duration and systemic nature of the transatlantic slave trade – spanning more than 300 years and leaving deep, lasting consequences – justify its characterisation in the strongest possible terms.
Supporters hope the resolution will mark a turning point – not just in how history is acknowledged, but in how its legacies are addressed.
(with newswires)
