UN Committee Declares Countries Legally Obligated To Provide Reparations for the Slave Trade

A United Nations committee says that countries are legally obligated to provide reparations for the African slave trade under a 1965 convention on racial discrimination. In a report published on Monday, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said that, “Parties must implement comprehensive reparatory measures for people of African descent, covering all aspects of remedies.”The report says that new findings are based on an interpretation of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.More than 180 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Portugal, are parties to the convention. The committee said that “irrespective of the legal characterization” of the slave trade at the time it was happening, “states remain bound by their present obligations under ICERD to eliminate contemporary racial discrimination and address structural inequalities and other continuing consequences linked to colonialism, the trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery.”The document states that financial reparations are not enough, and insists countries should implement “transformative” measures. The authors say that more than 15 million people were uprooted by the slave trade, calling it the “largest forced deportation in history, inflicting lasting harm on Africa, destabilizing societies, entrenching economic dependency, destroying cultures and causing immense loss.” They also say it reshaped “both African and American societies through violence.”A member of the committee who helped draft the report, Pela Boker-Wilson, said in a video that the document is a “watershed moment.” She added that the committee is looking at a “reparatory justice bundle” of actions for states to take that would include “retribution” for the slave trade as well as memorialization and a promise of “non-recurrence.”Several countries have argued that they are not obliged to provide reparations because the slave trade was not illegal at the time. Ms. Boker-Wilson told the AFP that she believes the report could carry “significant authoritative weight” in court cases.Ms. Boker-Wilson also said that the push for reparations is a “global initiative” and is not just focused on America. She also insisted that countries should “welcome” the new report. The report comes amid a growing push for slavery reparations. In March, the United Nations adopted a resolution from Ghana that labeled the slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity,” and called for reparations. The resolution was met with opposition from America, Israel, the European Union, and the United Kingdom, with the United States calling it a “cynical usage of historical wrongs as a leverage point” to reallocate resources and the European Union saying it would create a “hierarchy of historical atrocities.” In May, Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, traveled to the Vatican and spoke with Pope Leo XIV with the hope of winning his support for reparations but left without any commitments.

UN Committee Declares Countries Legally Obligated To Provide Reparations for the Slave Trade

UN Committee Declares Countries Legally Obligated To Provide Reparations for the Slave Trade

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