African and Caribbean nations have demanded a formal apology and compensation from countries that profited from the transatlantic slave trade.
The calls were made at the end of a three-day conference in Ghana aimed at strengthening the push for reparative justice.
It comes after a significant United Nations resolution in March that described transatlantic slavery as the “gravest crime against humanity” and encouraged UN member states to help fund a reparations initiative.
Between the 15th and 19th centuries, an estimated 12 to 15 million African men, women, and children were forcibly captured and transported across the Atlantic to the Americas to work as slaves.
A 19-point reparations framework has been approved at the “Next Steps” conference held in Accra, Ghana’s capital.
The plan includes demands for full debt cancellation, the return of stolen cultural artefacts, and the creation of an international reparations fund, although no specific figure was provided. It also highlights the unequal and lasting effects of slavery on African women and girls.
Conference leaders also urged former slave-trading nations to issue “full, formal and unconditional apologies” for their role in the transatlantic slave trade.
John Dramani Mahama, President of Ghana, told delegates: “History does not ask us to inherit guilt, but it asks us to inherit responsibility.”
Delivering a virtual address at the conference, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged that enslaved people were “dehumanised and treated as goods.”
But he cautioned that reparations for slavery should not be reduced solely to monetary compensation, adding that they should not be seen as a “cheque written to bring the story to a close.”
In March, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the resolution, with 123 countries backing it, while the United States, Israel, and Argentina opposed the move to classify the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity.
Meanwhile, 52 countries—including the United Kingdom and several European Union member states—abstained from the vote.
General Assembly resolutions, unlike those of the UN Security Council, are not legally binding.
The United Kingdom has consistently opposed demands for reparations, arguing that present-day institutions should not be held accountable for historical injustices.
“No single set of atrocities should be regarded as more or less significant than another,” UK ambassador to the UN James Kariuki had then said.
The US ambassador to the United Nations similarly stated that the country does not “recognise a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”
He further noted that the UN resolution did not clearly define “who the recipients of ‘reparatory justice’ would be.”
So far, no nation has provided reparations to the descendants of enslaved Africans or to impacted countries across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America.
In the 19th century, most government payments related to slavery were made as compensation to slave owners, rather than to the enslaved people themselves.
This also included the United Kingdom, which in the 1830s, after abolishing slavery, paid slave owners compensation equivalent to more than $21 billion (£16 billion) in today’s value.
