{"id":495374,"date":"2026-03-25T23:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495374\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T23:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T23:46:07","slug":"un-votes-to-describe-slave-trade-as-gravest-crime-against-humanity-slavery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/495374\/","title":{"rendered":"UN votes to describe slave trade as \u2018gravest crime against humanity\u2019 | Slavery"},"content":{"rendered":"

The United Nations<\/a> has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the \u201cgravest crime against humanity\u201d and called for reparations as \u201ca concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs\u201d.<\/p>\n

The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). It had been proposed by Ghana\u2019s president, John Dramani Mahama<\/a>, who said: \u201cLet it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voting in favour were 123 states, while Argentina, Israel and the US voted against. There were 52 abstentions, including the UK and members of the EU.<\/p>\n

James Kariuki, the UK charg\u00e9 d\u2019affaires to the UN, said Britain continues to disagree<\/a> with fundamental propositions of the text and was \u201cfirmly of the view that we must not create a hierarchy of historical atrocities\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo single set of atrocities should be regarded as more or less significant than another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

As the resolution went ahead in New York, the British MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy presented a petition to the House of Commons, pushing for a state apology by the UK for its key role in slavery and colonialism of Africans.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many of the intersecting global challenges we now face are rooted in the legacies of enslavement and empire: from geopolitical instability to racism, inequality, underdevelopment and climate breakdown,\u201d the petition read. \u201cTo truly confront these issues, we must acknowledge where they come from.\u201d<\/p>\n

For four centuries, seven European nations including the UK enslaved and trafficked more than 15 million Africans across the Atlantic. The scale of the chattel slavery was such that 18th and 19th-century abolitionists coined the term \u201ccrime against humanity\u201d to describe it. Historians have also linked wealth from enslavement to mass industrialisation in the west.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s framed as a trade, it distorts the reality,\u201d said Jasmine Mickens, a postgraduate student of history and government at Harvard University. \u201cIt was not a consensual joint business enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, John Dramani Mahama lamented the erasure of Black history and censorship of teaching the \u2018truth of slavery, segregation and racism\u2019 in US schools. Photograph: Jeenah Moon\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Ghana, which has been at the forefront of an effort across Africa and the Caribbean<\/a> for reparatory justice, pushed for the terminology to be updated to reflect the lingering impact of chattel slavery.<\/p>\n

Experts involved in drafting the resolution say it is an attempt to get \u201cpolitical recognition at the highest level\u201d for one of the darkest eras in history.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main point is not to introduce a hierarchy of crimes,\u201d said Kyeretwie Osei, the head of the economic, social and cultural council at the AU. \u201cIt is rather an attempt to properly situate that particular chapter in history \u2026 how it was so world-breaking in its impact that it essentially created the platform for every atrocity and crime against humanity that then followed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[This] was the chattelisation of human beings which essentially reduces them to property that can be sold or inherited [and] the status of enslavement could be passed on through birth,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The UN first acknowledged that slavery was a crime in a 2001 conference against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance in Durban, South Africa.<\/p>\n

Panashe Chigumadzi, a historian and rapporteur for the AU\u2019s committee of experts on reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid, who drafted the framework, said that conference had had many limitations, including its framing of slavery as a \u201cretroactive moral judgment rather than a continuous legal reality\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe AU framework \u2026 establishes that the inception of the trafficking in enslaved Africans during the so-called \u2018age of discovery\u2019 constituted the definitive break in world history, which inaugurated the break from localised feudal regimes to the modern world racial capitalist system,\u201d she said. \u201cThis structurally transformed the fates of all peoples across the world through racialised regimes of labour, capital, property, territory and sovereignty that continue to determine relations of life and the land on which it is lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the resolution is not legally binding, it is now expected to pave the way for more progress in a fight that scholars and some politicians say has been hampered by the rise of rightwing movements<\/a> in the west.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the AU has been working to ensure the codifying of chattel slavery as a crime that requires not just apologies, but reparatory justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, the focus is on this particular moment [and] recognising that it is a culmination of many moments before this day,\u201d Mickens said. \u201cWhat people don\u2019t seem to remember \u2013 due to all the efforts to erase history \u2013 is that black people, African people, have resisted the institution of child enslavement and the trafficking of Africans since the first hour the crime was committed on the shores of Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Wednesday\u2019s vote, Mahama lamented the continuing erasure of Black history in the US<\/a> through increasing censorship of teaching the \u201ctruth of slavery, segregation and racism\u201d in schools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese policies are becoming a template for other governments and some private institutions,\u201d he said at an event at the UN headquarters. \u201cAt the very least, they are slowly normalising the erasure.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the \u201cgravest crime against humanity\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-495374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}