BREAKING THE SILENCE: How the UN and Accra Are Forging a New Era of Reparatory Justice

BREAKING THE SILENCE:
How the UN and Accra Are Forging a New Era of Reparatory Justice

By CeeJay Marie | Scribe Diva Ink

I am honored and excited to announce a historic moment, centuries in the making.

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/RES/80/250, Declaration on the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity. The resolution formally declared the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for international dialogue on reparatory justice and meaningful repair. It was the first resolution in the UN’s 80-year history dedicated exclusively to slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

Then Ghana took the next step.

From June 17–19, President John Dramani Mahama, the African Union Champion on Advancing the Cause of Justice and the Payment of Reparations, hosted the High-Level Consultative Conference on the Next Steps to the Landmark UN Resolution in Accra. Its purpose was ambitious: translate the political momentum of the resolution into a common framework of actionable commitments for reparatory justice. More than 80 countries were represented.

Did you know this? I didn’t!!

And that is precisely why I am writing about it.

For generations, international conversations surrounding the transatlantic slave trade, racialized chattel slavery, colonial exploitation, and their enduring consequences have struggled to move from remembrance toward repair. The global conversation moved beyond another commemoration and formally placed reparatory justice, restitution, accountability, and structural reform on the international agenda. Ghana’s own framing describes the resolution as a departure from commemorative gestures toward historical truth, reconciliation, and systemic justice.

UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/250

The March resolution is historic not because it created an enforceable global reparations regime. It did not. General Assembly resolutions are nonbinding. Its significance lies elsewhere: 123 nations voted to place formal recognition and reparatory justice squarely within the international conversation.

The resolution names the crime. It describes the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the “gravest crime against humanity” and recognizes slavery as a violation of jus cogens, the peremptory norms of international law. It calls upon member states to engage in inclusive, good-faith dialogue concerning reparatory justice, encompassing formal apologies, restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, and guarantees of non-repetition. It also calls for the prompt and unhindered restitution of cultural property, artifacts, manuscripts, and national archives to their countries of origin without charge. Importantly, the resolution does not treat these atrocities as history disconnected from the present. Reparatory measures are also framed as part of addressing contemporary inequalities associated with slavery, colonialism, and systemic racism.

This did not emerge from nowhere. African and Caribbean states, civil-society organizations, activists, and others have pursued this conversation for decades. Ghana led negotiations on this particular resolution for at least a year before the March vote.

Accra: From Resolution to Next Steps

The Accra conference was designed to answer a practical question: What happens after the resolution?

Over three days, heads of state, foreign ministers, diplomats, legal scholars, activists, diaspora representatives, international organizations, and other experts gathered to develop a coherent post-adoption framework. The conference culminated in the Accra Next Steps Commitments on Reparatory Justice, organized around 19 strategic pillars addressing an extraordinary range of issues, including legal justice, compensation, cultural restitution, economic restructuring, debt, health, education, technology, gender, climate justice, psychological and spiritual healing, and diaspora engagement.

The conference also established three international bodies: the Advisory Panel on Reparatory Justice, the Expert Panel on Restitution of Cultural Artefacts, and the Legal Panel for Reparatory Justice. It called for an annual high-level consultative forum intended to sustain political momentum and accountability.

Then came a moment rich with symbolism. On June 19, participants gathered at Christiansborg Castle, also known as Osu Castle, a former hub of the transatlantic slave trade, for what Ghana describes as the first extra-territorial Juneteenth commemorative celebration outside the United States. A conference about moving from remembrance toward repair ended by carrying a distinctly American commemoration of emancipation back across the Atlantic.

So again, I want to express my sincere gratitude.

To the United Nations General Assembly: Thank you to the 123 nations that voted in favor of formally recognizing the magnitude of the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans and placing reparatory justice more firmly within international dialogue.

To Ghana and President John Dramani Mahama: Thank you for championing this effort and refusing to allow the resolution to end as words on paper. Ghana moved quickly from recognition toward the harder questions of implementation, institutional architecture, continued dialogue, and accountability.

Bravo...right?

Well.

Look at the vote.

The resolution passed overwhelmingly: 123 nations voted in favor, 52 abstained, and three voted against it. The United States, Israel, and Argentina cast the three no votes. All 27 European Union member states abstained, as did countries including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Japan.

And my immediate reaction was simple:

How can anyone be against this?

It should not take an international resolution to recognize that enslaving millions of human beings was a catastrophic violation of humanity.

Now, I understand that nations do not enter the United Nations merely as collections of individual human consciences. They act as sovereign states considering international law, legal liability, financial consequences, precedent, and geopolitical interests. The objections deserve to be represented fairly.

The United States argued, among other things, that international law does not recognize a retroactive legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not prohibited under international law when they occurred. The European Union raised concerns about retroactive application of international law and objected to describing slavery as the “gravest” crime against humanity because international law establishes no hierarchy among crimes against humanity.

Those are legal arguments.

I am asking a human question.

Does it take international law to be human?

Absolutely not.

We do not need a law to understand that human beings should be treated with dignity. We do not need a treaty to understand that when tremendous harm has been done, acknowledging that harm matters. And we should not need an international legal apparatus before we can say, sincerely and without qualification: We are sorry.

That is what makes this historic achievement simultaneously worthy of celebration and profoundly sad.

Most of us learn some version of the golden rule before we can even read: Play nice in the sandbox. Share your toys. Clean up the messes you make. Say sorry when you hurt someone. It is an elementary code of human coexistence.

Yet somehow, when the sandbox becomes the world stage, that simple morality becomes extraordinarily complicated. Suddenly there are legal precedents. Sovereign interests. Financial liabilities. Jurisdictional questions. Institutional interests. Historical technicalities.

Those questions matter. I do not dismiss them.

But neither should their complexity allow us to lose sight of the simple thing underneath them.

Human beings were harmed on a scale almost beyond comprehension. Their labor was taken. Their freedom was taken. Families were separated. Cultures were disrupted. Wealth was extracted. And the consequences did not simply evaporate when the laws eventually changed.

Repair will be complicated. Humanity should not be.

That is why I celebrate what happened at the United Nations and in Accra while regretting that such extraordinary international machinery is necessary in the first place.

The resolution itself is not reparatory justice. The Accra commitments are not the completion of reparatory justice. They are steps toward determining what repair might require and how the international community might pursue it.

And perhaps that is what laws and institutions are ultimately for when our collective empathy proves insufficient.

Laws do not teach us how to be human. They are merely the imperfect tools we are forced to create when humanity alone fails to move us.

Core references
Human Rights Watch analysis of A/RES/80/250
Official Ghana High-Level Consultative Conference on Reparations
Pan African Heritage Museum account of the Accra conference
PassBlue reporting on the March 25 vote and states' objections
UN General Assembly Resolution A/RES/80/250

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