UN committee backs reparatory justice for African slavery, Ghana says

Ghana has welcomed a United Nations committee report that it says strengthens the international legal case for reparatory justice for the trafficking and enslavement of Africans.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the guidance from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination represented a significant step towards holding states responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and racialised chattel slavery.

In a statement posted on social media on Tuesday, September 1, the ministry said the committee had established that states were required under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to provide reparatory justice for historical crimes.

“The long-used excuse that these crimes were lawful when they were committed no longer holds,” the ministry said. “The Committee itself calls this a paradigm shift.”

The ministry’s statement did not identify the countries that could face claims or explain how any obligation to provide reparations would be enforced.

Reparatory justice can take several forms, including formal apologies, restitution, financial compensation and measures intended to prevent similar injustices from recurring.

According to the ministry, the committee’s report moves the international debate beyond recognising the harm caused by slavery towards accepting a responsibility to address its continuing consequences.

“Recognition is becoming obligation,” it said. “Apology, restitution, compensation and guarantees of non-repetition are no longer matters of goodwill, but of duty.”

The ministry said the guidance provided a legal foundation for UN Resolution A/RES/80/250, which it said was spearheaded by Ghana and described the transatlantic enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.

Its statement came as President John Dramani Mahama presented a report at an extraordinary African Union meeting in Angola on the Ghana-led resolution.

Mr Mahama, who serves as the African Union Champion for Reparations, previously convened the Next Steps Summit in Accra to advance discussions about reparatory justice.

He is also expected to host a side event on restitution in New York during the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

“A crime does not rot,” the ministry said. “It was in this spirit that Ghana carried the cause of the enslaved to the United Nations. Today, that conviction stands affirmed in international law.”

Ghana has increasingly placed itself at the centre of efforts by African and Caribbean countries to secure redress for slavery and colonial exploitation.

The campaign seeks to address not only the historical crimes but also what its supporters describe as their continuing economic, social and racial consequences for Africa and people of African descent.

Ghana said it would continue working with the African Union, the Caribbean Community and people of African descent throughout the diaspora to advance the reparations campaign.

“The blood that binds us is stronger than the oceans that appeared to separate us,” the ministry said.