On March 25, 123 Member States in the United Nations voted in favor of Resolution A/80/L.48, titled the “Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity.”

Understanding the Transatlantic slave trade

For nearly 400 years, European colonizers and slave traders kidnapped approximately 12.5 million African men, women and children onto Atlantic slave ships to be shipped to the Americas for labor.

Around 11 million survived the Middle Passage, while the 1.5 million who did not make it either passed from sickness or starvation, jumped ship or were intentionally thrown off by tying chained Africans to heavy rocks — intentionally meant to drown and sink slaves to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Slavery has existed throughout human history, even being found on the world’s oldest written set of laws, the Code of Hammurabi, and even in the Old Testament as well.

However, the Transatlantic slave trade was the first time in recorded human history that Africans, under a race-based chattel system, were treated as commodities used for labor in Europe’s economy. They were taken for pure economic interest, not as prisoners of war.

Once in the “New World,” African slaves endured traumatic, inexplicable abuse from White slave owners. Originally, slaves were primarily forced to work on tobacco, rice, sugar and coffee plantations on the North American Atlantic coast.

However, the invention of the cotton gin in the late 18th century led to a boom in England and the U.S.’s textile industry, causing an increasing need for higher cotton production. Slaves were forced to meticulously pick cotton plants day and night in the scorching southern heat to meet the demands of their White owners. 

The African slave trade was deemed illegal by the U.S. Congress in 1808. However, by 1860, the slave population had reached nearly 4 million, most of whom were on southern plantations.

Treatment of those enslaved in the U.S.

The following segment includes a discussion of sexual and physical abuse.

Plantation owners worked to ensure that their free source of labor could never leave, thus prohibiting slaves from being able to read and write. If slaves did not agree to the orders of their plantation owners, then they could be whipped, beaten, forced to work in even more inhuman conditions or even killed.

Many enslavers also sexually assaulted women who had no legal right to refuse such advances. In addition, these women had no legal right to their children, and families could be easily separated and sold off to different plantations for profit. 

The end of slavery

During the American Civil War, 16th President of the United States Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that “slaves within any State, or designated part of a State … in rebellion, … shall be then, henceforward, and forever free.”

While it did not immediately grant freedom to those enslaved, it was a step forward.

In 1865, the Civil War ended when the Union won against the heavily slave-populated Confederacy, and the U.S. Congress adopted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The amendment formally abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the U.S., unless as a punishment for a convicted crime.

Modern effects

While slavery was banished in 1865, its effects still reverberate today. Through the Jim Crow era, lasting health defects found in African Americans from slavery, modern issues with police brutality, disproportionate incarceration rates amongst Black Americans and now the ongoing battle of erasing this shameful side of American history, Black Americans in the U.S. and Africans overall have never been able to face any justice for such trauma. 

‘Reparatory justice’

“Today, we come together in solemn solidarity to affirm truth and pursue a route to healing a reparative justice,” Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, speaking on the behalf of the 54-member African group, said at the UN conference.

Resolution A/80/L.48 calls to acknowledge “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, system nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.”

“There are spirits of the victims of slavery present in this room at this moment, and they are listening for one word only: justice,” Esther Phillips, Poet Laureate of Barbados, said.

The resolution is set to affirm the historical wrongdoings set upon Africans and those of African roots in a way that will establish global justice, human rights, dignity and healing, while also emphasizing that reprimandation leads to healing.

The act of a “reparatory justice” includes those who partook in the Transatlanic slave trade providing formal apologies, establishing initiatives that prioritize truth-seeking, memorialization, educating, medical and psychosocial support and compensation. 

“To deliver reparatory justice, States and other actors must implement a comprehensive approach that includes reparations in various forms,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said. 

Pushed by Ghana, 123 countries and territories voted in favor of the resolution. Three countries—Argentina, Israel and the United States—voted against the decision. 52 territories and countries, including many amongst the European continent, abstained from the vote.

Institutions around the world have listened to the resolution and are taking their own steps to give back to those affected by the slave trade.

Some countries have removed public spaces that dedicate statues to those who contributed to African slavery. Countries instead are beginning to memorialize Black and African figures who have contributed to social justice.

In addition, museums that have been found guilty of withholding objects from looted African communities during the slave trade are now working to return stolen artifacts.

In October of 2025, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) formally reopened their “newly reimagined” African American art galleries to the public following Ghana’s initiatives set to return their artifacts back to the country. While the DIA has been dedicated to returning artifacts, the new galleries have expanded exhibition space in the museum to provide more Black and African history to gallery viewers. 

Even though the resolution received abstained and rejected votes, African leaders demanding reparations and healing at the same global scale of their oppressors is a step towards centuries worth of injustices.