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African Union (AU) member states have endorsed a resolution declaring slavery as a crime against humanity, tabled by Ghana at the 39th AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The new resolution will be tabled at the UN General Assembly on March 25 this year.
President John Dramani Mahama, who doubles as the AU Champion for Reparations, tabled the draft proposal to rally the AU’s endorsement and passage of the resolution on declaring colonisation, apartheid, slavery and the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity.
The move is to seek reparatory justice for Africa, which has largely been the victim of the tragic history of slavery and the slave trade that took place between the 14th and 15th centuries.
The reparative justice advocacy is a call for recognition, responsibility, apology, and restitution for the impact colonisation, apartheid, slavery and the slave trade had on Africa and its people everywhere, including Latin America and the Caribbean.
It calls for financial restitution, environmental restoration, and the return of stolen cultural heritage and a structured system that affords Africa equal opportunity across the globe.
President Mahama hinted at the diplomatic action to table the resolution at the 80th UN General Assembly on March 25, a date set aside by the UN to be observed globally as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
According to the UN, the slave trade, which spanned over 400 years, forcefully took more than 15 million men, women and children from Africa to other parts of the world, especially North and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe to work on plantation farms and industries.
An estimated two million slaves died and were thrown into the oceans en route to their destinations.
European and American slave owners were compensated for losing their slaves after the abolition of slavery and the slave trade between the 1830s and 1900s across the world, but the victims and countries born after independence have not been duly recognised and paid reparations.
The tragic history has left scars, with the UN calling for the establishment of an outreach programme to mobilise educational institutions, civil society and other organisations to inculcate in future generations the "causes, consequences and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, and to communicate the dangers of racism and prejudice".
Speaking at a press conference at the AU Summit last Sunday, following the endorsement of the resolution, President Mahama justified the pursuit of reparative justice, stating that the initiative was firmly grounded in international law and built on principles of historical accuracy, legal defensibility, and continental and diasporan alignment.
“The initiative is firmly grounded in international law.
Slavery is prohibited under international law as a peremptory norm.
It just co-joins principles from which no derogation is permitted.
“The resolution builds upon this legal foundation and rests on three pillars. First is historical accuracy.
Second is legal defensibility, and the third is continental and diaspora alignment,” he said.
He stressed that the resolution titled, "Declaration of the Trafficking in Enslaved Africans and Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity", reflected "rigorous scholarship, moral clarity and diplomatic credibility".
President Mahama indicated that extensive consultations with stakeholders had been conducted with institutions such as UNESCO, the Global Group of Experts on Reparations, and the Pan-African Lawyers Union.
“We hosted the inaugural joint meeting of the AU Committee of Experts on Reparations and the African Union Legal Experts Reference Group in Accra earlier this month to further refine the text of the resolution.
We also began engagement with the diaspora at the Ghana Diaspora Summit held in December last year,” he said.
He affirmed that the process had been inclusive, deliberate and consultative.
The President stated that with the adoption of the resolution by the AU Assembly, Ghana would engage with the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) and other regional groupings to build a broad consensus behind the resolution.
He clarified that the initiative was not directed at any nation, but was directed towards truth, recognition of the tragic history and reconciliation for Africa.
While addressing the Assembly of Heads of States at the Summit, President Mahama stressed that securing reparatory justice could only be through determination and unity, as it would not be handed over freely by the benefactors of the cruel history of slavery.
He called on Africans and their leaders everywhere to speak with one voice on the global platform.
"Reparatory justice will not be handed over to us like political independence. It must be asserted, it must be pursued and secured through determination and unity," he said.
He called on leaders of the AU member states to transform memory into policy, convert grievances of the continent’s past into a collective strategy, and also turn African history into sovereign action.
“Let us not defer justice, let us not postpone dignity, and let us act together,” President Mahama said.
He further urged African states, regional economic communities, local authorities, cultural institutions, and international partners to move from moral aspirations to binding frameworks with clear timelines and measurable outcomes to achieve the goal of securing reparations.
He said while the development of the continent was essential, it could not speak of development without knowing its identity, quoting Pan-Africanist, Marcus Garvey, who said, “People without the knowledge of their history, origin and culture are like trees without roots”.
He stressed that reparation was not symbolic, but “a civilisational repair, healing of deep historical wounds.”
He added that for far too long, Africa’s story has been told through foreign lenses, stressing that it was time for Africans to tell their own stories.
