On 25 March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”. The resolution, which Ghana proposed, received 123 votes in favour, three against, and fifty-two abstentions. Ghanaian President John D. Mahama expressed in The Guardian that the resolution is an invitation to the international community to move toward a “structured dialogue on repair”.
This acknowledgement is welcome and should pave the way for reparations. Besides acknowledging the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, countries that engaged in or profited from it should also commit to repairing its legacies. Reparations should be specific and serve the benefit of citizens of African countries that the transatlantic slave trade affected. Countries that engaged in the trade should address systemic racism domestically and invest in human development in affected African countries. Investments should focus on key sectors such as healthcare, education, trade, and agriculture.
While not undermining the seriousness of any historical injustice, it is unfair to Africans to treat the transatlantic slave trade equally with other injustices.
For over 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade, European powers, specifically Denmark, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, along with the United States, forcefully deported over 12 million Africans into chattel slavery. Enslaved Africans worked on cotton, rice, sugarcane, and other plantations, often under harsh working conditions and severe health risks, while separated from their families. The mortality rate among enslaved people, especially children, was high.
The average lifespan of enslaved Africans working on sugar and rice plantations was seven years after arriving in the Americas. In parts of the British and French Caribbean, the estimated life expectancy for enslaved people was 23 years. The enduring legacies of the transatlantic slave trade include social and economic underdevelopment in affected African countries, persistent racial discrimination, and health, social, and economic disparities for people of African descent in the diaspora. Without acknowledging and addressing the legacies of the transatlantic slave trade, Africans at home and in the diaspora will continue to experience the same social and economic disadvantages.
President Mahama’s remark in The Guardian about the resolution was clear: “This is not about assigning collective guilt to present generations.” Rather, it is about understanding how the transatlantic slave trade has shaped modern inequalities and how recognising it can promote a more inclusive global community. The United States, whose history reckons with the enslavement of Africans, was among the three countries that voted against the UN resolution.
US Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council, Ambassador Dan Negrea, said that the US cannot recognise reparations for “historical wrongs that were not illegal… at the time they occurred.” However, despite the legality of slavery in the antebellum US, it is essential to recognise it as a moral and legal wrong. The US refusal to recognise the negative legacies of the transatlantic slave trade signifies the avoidance of responsibility and justification of the enslavement of Africans.
The United Kingdom, which both engaged in and profited from the transatlantic slave trade, abstained from voting on the resolution. In a statement, Ambassador James Kariuki, UK Chargé d’Affaires to the UN, explained that in the UK’s view, “we must not create a hierarchy of historical atrocities”. Kariuki said such a hierarchy would simplify the complexity of suffering endured in different contexts. The UK proposes the equal classification of all atrocities, showing “the same seriousness, empathy, and respect” to all historical injustices.
By this proposition, the UK denies the gravity of the transatlantic slave trade and its role in it. While not undermining the seriousness of any historical injustice, it is unfair to Africans to treat the transatlantic slave trade equally with other injustices.
Besides the United Kingdom, all the other European countries that engaged in the trade also abstained from voting on the resolution. Their abstinence signifies an indirect denial and avoidance of responsibility for their role in the trade. It is essential for these countries to recognise the gravity of the transatlantic slave trade and their involvement with it, as an honest reckoning with its present‑day legacies. Racial disparities in healthcare, education, and security across Europe and the Americas have roots in centuries of slavery and the racial hierarchies it created. They should advance reparative justice by formal acknowledgements and apologies, and collaborate on international frameworks like the UN International Decade for People of African Descent.
To dismantle racial stereotypes and promote intercultural understanding, countries should integrate accurate histories of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies into school curricula and promote anti-racism training.
Which reparations do Africans need?
Countries that engaged in the transatlantic slave trade or profited from it should implement four forms of reparations locally and internationally.
First, they should eliminate systemic racism domestically through fair and inclusive policies. Racial discrimination against people of African descent persists in countries across Europe and the Americas, including countries that engaged in the slave trade. In the US, a 2020 data showed Black Americans were arrested at approximately 2 times the rate of White Americans. A 2023 report shows that the imprisonment rate for Black adults is approximately 5 times higher than for White adults.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has stated the need to end slavery’s lasting legacies of inequality and racism. Guterres called on countries to remove the persisting barriers restricting the rights and potential of people of African descent by committing to human rights, equality, and dignity. Governments in countries that engaged in the slave trade should implement policy reforms to ensure racial equality for people of African descent.
Reforms should target the education, healthcare, employment, housing, and justice systems through affirmative measures and data collection to track disparities. To dismantle racial stereotypes and promote intercultural understanding, countries should integrate accurate histories of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies into school curricula and promote anti-racism training.
Second, in partnership with countries that engaged in the slave trade, the UN should establish an international reparations trust fund to support human development in affected African countries. The transatlantic slave trade most affected regions in present-day West and Central Africa.
Approximately 40 percent of enslaved people were from Angola and neighbouring areas in Congo. Thirty-five percent were from present-day Nigeria, Benin, and parts of Cameroon and Gabon. Present-day Ghana accounted for about 10 percent, while Senegal, Gambia, and parts of Guinea accounted for the remaining captives.
The trust fund should prioritise healthcare, infrastructure, education, and trade initiatives in these countries. Specific projects should include building hospitals, improving children’s health, curriculum development on African history, skills training in technical fields, support for local industries, agricultural modernisation, and global market access to foster self-reliance and reduce dependency.
There should be mandatory contributions to the trust fund by former slave-trading countries and voluntary donations by other countries. The African Development Bank can coordinate fund allocation to affected countries under the supervision of the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the African Union. Supervision would ensure financial accountability, independent audits, prevent misappropriation, and provide technical support to maximise efficiency and long-term impact. This approach is a sustainable step toward reparations, ensuring inclusive growth rather than one-off compensation.
Addressing the deep-rooted health inequalities that stemmed from centuries of exploitation during and after slavery requires deliberate measures.
Third, former slave-trading countries in Europe and the United States should fund education pathways for students from affected African countries, such as Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, and Senegal, to pursue higher education at universities abroad. Scholarship programs should cover full tuition, living expenses, travel, and health insurance. Scholarships should focus on building human capital in critical fields, including history, economics, political science, health sciences, and theology.
These fields would help students deepen their understanding of the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies and support ethical leadership, community reconciliation, and cultural preservation. They would also strengthen governance and institutions, sustainable development, trade, improve healthcare systems, and address persistent disparities.
To ensure long-term benefits for affected African countries, student beneficiaries should commit to returning home upon completing their studies, contributing through public service, research, teaching, or private-sector roles aligned with national development. Training African professionals who stay back and staff European institutions is not repair for Africa. One way to achieve beneficiaries’ successful return is through binding contracts. However, return must be genuinely viable—through competitive salaries, functional institutions, and professional environments that make coming home a dignified choice rather than a contractual punishment. No form of reparations, however well-intentioned, should restrict the mobility of people whose ancestors had their freedom of movement violently erased. The obligation runs both ways: students commit to return while sponsoring countries commit to making that return worth something.
Fourth, improve healthcare services for people of African descent in the diaspora. Racial disparities in healthcare persist in countries that once engaged in the transatlantic slave trade. In the United States, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023—approximately 3.5 times higher than the rate for White women. Tennis champion Serena Williams nearly died after giving birth in 2017. Despite her wealth and success, Serena experienced a pulmonary embolism post-C-section. Medical staff initially dismissed her concerns until she advocated for a CT scan before receiving life-saving care.
In the United Kingdom, Black women face a higher risk of maternal death compared with White women. The MBRRACE-UK data for 2020–2022 shows a relative risk of 2.87 for Black women, with earlier periods showing disparities as high as four times. The gaps in maternal care represent broader systemic challenges in healthcare access and implicit bias that continue to affect Black populations, including diagnosis, treatment, and patient-doctor communication.
No form of reparations can ever fully compensate for the gravity of the transatlantic slave trade and the intergenerational human harm it caused.
Certain modern medical practices have roots in the exploitation of enslaved Africans. In the 1840s, Dr. J. Marion Sims, the so-called “father of modern gynaecology”, developed surgical techniques to repair vesicovaginal fistulas. Dr. Sims performed repeated, painful experimental operations without anaesthesia on enslaved Black women in Alabama, including Anarcha, who endured at least 30 procedures.
Another case, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, occurred between 1932 and 1972, when the US Public Health Service in Macon County, Alabama, deceitfully enrolled 600 impoverished African American men as participants. Having 399 participants with syphilis and 201 as controls, researchers deceived them into receiving treatment for “bad blood” while withholding effective treatment, even after penicillin became available as a cure in the mid-1940s. For 40 years, the study continued without participants’ consent, resulting in massive deaths from syphilis-related complications, wives getting infections, and children born with congenital syphilis.
Addressing the deep-rooted health inequalities that stemmed from centuries of exploitation during and after slavery requires deliberate measures. Investing in culturally competent care, implicit bias training for medical professionals, improved access to quality prenatal and postnatal services, and community-based health programs will close these gaps. These measures will also ensure equitable access to high-quality healthcare and promote healthier lives for African descendants in the diaspora.
Reparations advocates, including the Caribbean Community, have proposed monetary compensation as reparations. However, direct payments risk absorption into existing systems of inequality, elite capture, or dismissal by individual beneficiaries as insufficient and insulting. Riskier is a one-time payment, which will allow former slave-trading nations to treat the transatlantic slave trade as a closed account. This trade remains an unhealed wound that money cannot clear like a debt.
No form of reparations can ever fully compensate for the gravity of the transatlantic slave trade and the intergenerational human harm it caused. True repair must begin with formal acknowledgement and sincere apologies from the countries and institutions that engaged in and profited from the trade. Reparations should take the form of sustainable investments in human development and must not be monetary. This path to reparations offers a way forward toward reconciliation, dignity, and a just future.
Jude Terna Ayua is a lawyer, policy analyst, and contributor at African Liberty.
Article first published by Afrocritik.
Photo by Tasha Jolley on Unsplash.