Slavery Bill Is Due: African, Caribbean Nations Unite For Reparations

African and Caribbean nations endorsed a 19-point reparations plan in Ghana’s capital, calling for formal apologies from countries that benefited from transatlantic slavery, comprehensive debt relief, and the creation of a Global Reparations Fund.

The plan was adopted jointly by the African Union and the Caribbean Community's Commission on Reparatory Justice at the close of a 3-day conference in the West African country.

The Accra conference, billed as "Next Steps," was the first major gathering on reparatory justice since the UN General Assembly passed a Ghana-sponsored resolution in March recognizing the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity.

While the UN resolution passed with 123 votes in favour, the United States, Israel and Argentina voted against it, 52 countries, including the UK and all EU member states, abstained.

"None of us gathered in this hall today can be held personally responsible for the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade," Ghana's President John Dramani Mahama told delegates.

"History does not ask us to inherit guilt, but it asks us to inherit responsibility."

At least 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported by European ships between the 15th and 19th centuries, a period spanning roughly 400 years.

A Plan, Not Just a Declaration

The 19-point plan goes significantly beyond symbolic recognition.

It calls for the establishment of a Global Reparations Fund, comprehensive debt cancellation for affected nations, and reforms to international financial institutions to ensure fairer representation for Global South countries.

It also demands the restitution of looted cultural property and ancestral remains, climate justice financing, and specific measures to address brutalities inflicted on African women and girls during slavery.

The document will be presented at the next UN General Assembly, with the African Union and CARICOM having merged previously separate frameworks into a single unified push.

Momentum Beyond Africa

Heads of state from Namibia, Liberia, Senegal, Barbados and Sao Tome and Principe attended the conference in person, alongside representatives from more than 80 countries including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP.

French President Emmanuel Macron addressed the conference via video from the Elysee Palace.

Macron said enslaved people "were torn from their homelands, deported, dehumanised, and treated as goods," while cautioning that reparations should not be seen "as an end point, or a cheque written to bring the story to a close."

French lawmakers also voted only last month, to formally repeal slavery-era laws that had defined enslaved people as "movable property," though they stopped short of including financial reparations in the legislation.

Also last month, Pope Leo XIV made a historic apology for the Vatican's role in legitimising slavery and its delay in condemning the practice.