United Nations, Mar 25 (EFE).- The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on Wednesday, proposed by Ghana and supported by the majority of member states, that labels African slavery as the “gravest crime against humanity.”
The resolution received 123 votes in favor in the UN General Assembly, with 52 abstentions (including Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), and faced notable opposition from the United States, Israel, and Argentina.
The text specifies “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans” as the ultimate crime due to the consequences it unleashed.
The document states that the crime represents “the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.”
Dan Negrea, the US representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), explained his country’s vote, calling the resolution “highly problematic in countless respects,” despite his government’s “condemnation of the historic wrongs that resulted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”
“The United States also does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred,” Negrea asserted.
Furthermore, the US representative claimed that the text promotes “specific” agendas and encourages the creation of new working groups and “costly” reports, which, he argued, the UN was “not founded” to do.
Secretary-General António Guterres referred to the transatlantic slave trade as a “deep betrayal of human dignity,” denouncing that it became “a machinery of mass exploitation and deliberate dehumanization of men, women and children.”
“It is a moment to confront the lasting legacies of inequality and racism. We will never forget the victims of slavery, and we must never forget the malevolent system that sustained it for so long,” he declared.
General Assembly President Annalena Baerbock affirmed that the slave trade and slavery “stand among the gravest violations of human rights in human history,” constituting an offense against the principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. EFE
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