Nigeria joined Ghana and 121 UN Member States on Wednesday to adopt a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity.

The resolution, spearheaded by Ghana, received 123 votes in favour, while three countries, Argentina, Israel and the United States, voted against, and 52 abstained.

The resolution was in commemoration of the Second International Decade for People of African Descent and the African Union’s Decade of Reparations.

Ghana’s President, John Mahama, 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,” Mr Mahama 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.

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 from which enslaved Africans were taken 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.”

The U.S. representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, Dan Negrea, said the U.S. “does not recognise a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.” 

(NAN)