The United Nations General Assembly is set to vote on a landmark resolution seeking to formally recognise the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity.”
The proposal, strongly backed by African nations, is being championed by John Dramani Mahama, who described it as a historic step toward justice and global acknowledgement.
Addressing the UN, Mahama said 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 400 years.”
The draft text declares the slave trade and the enslavement of Africans as the most severe crime against humanity, while also drawing attention to its lasting impact, including racism and inequality.
Calling it “a safeguard against forgetting,” Mahama criticised attempts in some countries to suppress teaching about slavery and racial injustice.
African Union officials say the resolution goes beyond symbolic recognition and pushes for restorative justice.
Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said: “The perpetrators of the transatlantic slave trade are known, the Europeans, the United States of America. We expect all of them to formally apologize to Africa and to all people of African descent.”
He added that restitution could include the return of looted cultural artefacts and broader efforts to address structural inequality.
Responding to concerns that the resolution may create a hierarchy of suffering, Ablakwa said: “We are not ranking suffering… We are not saying that our pain should be valued more than your pain.”
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