Ghana has rallied the United Nations General Assembly to vote and formally designate the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and the system of racialised chattel enslavement as “the gravest crime against humanity”.
The landmark resolution that also calls for reparatory justice and the restitution of looted cultural artefacts.
Adopted with an overwhelming majority of 123 Member States voting in favour, UN Resolution A/80/L.48 marks a historic shift in the international community’s engagement with the enduring legacies of slavery.
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Three countries, Argentina, Israel, and the United States, voted against it.
Fifty-two nations abstained, including the United Kingdom and all 27 members of the European Union.
British opposition leader Kemi Badenoch lashed out at the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not voting against the resolution.
The vote took place on the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
This is a date of deliberate and profound symbolic significance.
Restitution
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama spoke ahead of the vote on behalf of Africa.
“Today, we come together in solemn solidarity to affirm truth and pursue a route to healing and reparative justice.”
President Mahama noted that the resolution:
“…allows us as a global community to collectively bear witness to the plight of more than 12.5 million men, women, and children whose homes, communities, names, families, hopes, dreams, futures, and lives were stolen from them over the course of the past 400 years.”
Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa was equally direct following the vote.
It is not about reopening old wounds; it is about ensuring that those wounds are remembered and acknowledged. It is about creating space for truth, for education, and for a more honest conversation that allows us to move forward with greater understanding.”
The resolution goes beyond symbolic designation. It carries specific, actionable demands.
Details
The resolution calls on UN member nations to engage in talks on reparatory justice, including a full and formal apology, measures of restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, guarantees of non-repetition, and changes to laws, programmes and services to address racism and systemic discrimination.
The resolution also urges the prompt and unhindered restitution of cultural items, including artworks, monuments, museum pieces, documents, and national archives, to their countries of origin without charge.
The resolution is the most significant multilateral acknowledgement of the transatlantic slave trade’s scale and legacy since the establishment of the International Day of Remembrance in 2007.
Ghana’s leadership in championing this resolution reflects a deliberate and strategic effort to move global discourse on slavery beyond symbolic acknowledgment toward institutional accountability and reparatory justice
