How does the pan-African UN resolution change the discussion about reparations?

words by Charles Brooks 

How does the pan-African resolution change the discussion about reparations? 

There is now a much different conversation about reparations and the reparations movement gaining momentum not only on the African continent but across the world as well.   

As the African Union’s lead official on reparations, Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama recently introduced, “Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity” to the United Nations General Assembly.  

The resolution directs the international community’s attention not only towards the historical legacies of slavery, the slave trade but to today’s neocolonialism and imperialism that maintains the legacies afterlife.  The different language in the resolution elevates the sense of urgency afforded to the reparations issue with a more severe description of the largest forced migration in history and one of the longest-running systems of organized mass human exploitation in recorded history. This resolution advances and goes further than the 2001 Durban Declaration Programme of Action where slavery was declared a crime against humanity, with more precise and specific language inserted. 

123 nations agreed and supported the resolution with their yes votes, while 54 abstained and 3 cast no votes. 

Standing on one side were the countries of Africa, Central America, South America and Asia. On the other side were the abstaining votes from every European country along with three no votes from the US, Israel and Argentina. The vote results provided a clear picture of today's geopolitical alignment, spotlighting the neocolonial and imperialist forces.  

The results also placed the contradictions on public display for the world to see. 

The imperial core vs. the periphery, the colonized vs the colonizers, and the creditors vs. the debtors. 

The international community recognized the resolution as the latest step in the continued pursuit of reparations, and reparatory justice. The resolution builds on and advances, not only the DDPA but the 1993 Abuja Reparations Conference as well. The resolution now joins the expanding repository of critical reparations documents. 

The eight-page resolution outlines a concise argument for reparations by laying out the uniqueness of the unprecedented crime committed, the extent of harm as a result of the crime, along with providing the historical context and legal precedents. 

The argument sheds light with a timeline of events where through various legal structures, Africans were commodified, to be considered property, units of account, or as capital assets.

Cited were the commonly accepted principles of international law along with fundamental principles reflected across African legal and moral traditions.

The resolution brings clarity with a root cause analysis that interrogates the material conditions faced by Africans by directing attention to the global political and economic structures that support/sustain slavery’s afterlife. Their analysis makes a connection to the structural racism, racial inequalities, underdevelopment, marginalization and socioeconomic disparities affecting not only Africans on the continent but around the world.  

The analysis brings attention to the link between African sovereignty and the consequences of carrying IMF debt. Directs the mind’s eye to the trade deals that continue the extraction of natural resources, and to the neocolonial and imperialist structures supporting the global capitalist ecosystem.   

There’s a 2023 report that details and analyzes the relationship with the IMF.  “Fifty Years of Failure: The IMF, Debt and Austerity in Africa,” covers Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. And shows that 8 out of 10 countries have recently been advised to cut or freeze public sector wage bills. Indeed, all ten countries were effectively advised by the IMF to target spending on public sector wage bills that would leave them spending under the global average on frontline workers in health, education and other sectors…” 

There’s a number of studies that researched the link between the material conditions and social infrastructure of Africans to large IMF debt, with similar findings and observations.   

And finally, the resolution contains an argument that outlines next steps and action items to build a transformative framework for reparations that extends beyond cash compensation where the implications will be felt for generations to come. At a time where reports indicate that up to 90% of African art resides outside of the continent, mostly shielded from public display. 

The vote and resolution reflect a paradigm shift in the pan-African reparations movement at a moment as the resistance against neocolonialism and imperialism escalates and intensifies. There is now a different conversation taking place as myths are dispelled, racial stereotypes are dismissed and connections are made. This resolution was the product of African collaboration to produce new language, with a structural analysis that connects and places today’s material conditions, the afterlife between slavery and the TransAtlantic slave trade on the one hand, and the ecosystem of global finance (capitalist system) on the other.   

The coming months will see events around the country to highlight the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Durban Conference. There’s an opportunity to talk and grapple with the DDPA, and the recent UN resolution.  To discuss and grapple with the different ways they connect to the current conditions of working people and how reparations can best address those conditions. 

25 years ago, at the 2001 Durban Conference Mr. Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement, who played a key role there at the conference said that Black people have to safeguard our interests because no one else would.  

The same holds true twenty-five years later in 2026.