Ghana Hails UN Report Declaring Reparatory Justice for Transatlantic Slave Trade Legal Duty – Ablakwa

Ghana has hailed a groundbreaking report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which concludes that perpetrators of the transatlantic enslavement must provide reparatory justice.

The report was highlighted by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, in a Facebook post on Monday.

According to Mr Ablakwa, the report comes at a time when President John Dramani Mahama has been presenting a comprehensive report at the African Union extraordinary meeting in Angola on the landmark Ghana-led UN Resolution declaring the transatlantic enslavement as the gravest crime against humanity.

He noted that President Mahama, after convening the Next Steps Summit in Accra, is set to host a consequential side event on Restitution in New York during the 81st session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) next month.

“‘A crime does not rot.’ 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,” Mr Ablakwa stated.

He explained that the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has issued authoritative guidance that States are bound, under the 1965 Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, to provide reparatory justice for the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery.

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

Mr Ablakwa said the CERD report provides the legal foundation beneath the moral authority of Resolution A/RES/80/250, which was led by Ghana.

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

He added that under the leadership of President John Dramani Mahama, who is the African Union Champion for Reparations, and in unity with the African Union, CARICOM and the diaspora, the cause for justice advances.

“The blood that binds us is stronger than the oceans that appeared to separate us. Justice does not expire with time,” Mr Ablakwa concluded.

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