Distinguished guests, excellencies, representatives of governments, scholars, activists, members of civil society, brothers and sisters from Africa and the African diaspora,
We gather today not merely to discuss history, but to confront injustice. We gather in memory of the millions of African men, women and children who were deprived the right to life, seized from their homes, chained in dungeons, packed into ships, sold as property, and forced to build the wealth of empires. We gather also in honour of those who resisted: those who fought in the villages, those who rebelled in the ships, those who escaped from plantations, those who preserved African memory under conditions designed to destroy it, and those who turned suffering into struggle.
The landmark United Nations General Assembly resolution on the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement is therefore not an ordinary diplomatic text. It is a historical rupture. It represents an important moment in the long struggle to force the world to recognize that the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was not an unfortunate episode, not a regrettable economic practice, and not merely a tragedy of its time. It was a crime against humanity, African civilization, African sovereignty and African development. But recognition, however historic, is not enough. The task before us is to move from recognition to repair.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was one of the most brutal systems of organized violence in human history. Over several centuries, African societies were raided, destabilized and drained of millions of their people. Human beings were converted into commodities. Their bodies became items of trade. Their labour became the foundation of plantation wealth. Their suffering became capital. The trade connected European ports, African coasts, Caribbean plantations and American economies in a vast machinery of kidnapping, transportation, torture, forced labour and racial domination.
Its violence was not accidental. It was planned, financed, insured, legalized and defended. Ships were built for it. Banks invested in it. Insurance firms protected its profits. Governments chartered companies to organize it. Laws were written to legitimize it. Churches and intellectual institutions often provided moral and ideological cover. The plantation system that grew from it did not simply exploit labour; it created a racial order in which Africans were defined as inferior in order to justify their enslavement. This ideology of race did not die with formal abolition. It survived in colonialism, segregation, apartheid, capitalism and the persistent devaluation of African lives in the global order.
In my book “Reparations: History, Struggle, Politics and Law”. I insist that reparations must be understood not as charity, but as justice; not as a sentimental appeal, but as a political, legal and historical necessity; not as a narrow demand for compensation alone, but as a comprehensive programme of repair, transformation and liberation. The book reminds us that the demand for reparations is rooted in memory, but it is directed towards the future. It is about correcting historical theft, but also about restructuring the conditions that continue to reproduce African underdevelopment.
Reparatory justice must therefore be understood in its full meaning. It includes acknowledgement, but it goes beyond acknowledgement. It includes apology, but it cannot end with apology. It includes compensation, but it is larger than money. Reparatory justice demands restitution, rehabilitation, truth-telling, institutional reform, cultural restoration, educational correction and guarantees of non-repetition. It requires the return of stolen cultural property. It requires the rewriting of distorted history. It requires development justice for societies deliberately weakened by centuries of extraction. It requires the dismantling of the structures that continue to benefit from the crimes of the past.
To give meaning to the United Nations resolution, we must refuse to allow it to become a ceremonial document. The resolution must not be buried in archives, cited once a year, and then forgotten. It must become the foundation of an international programme of action. It must give strength to African governments, Caribbean governments, diaspora communities, legal scholars, activists and institutions that have long insisted that the world cannot be reconciled with injustice while refusing repair. It is in this context that find the participation of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron in this meeting as totally unacceptable. This should not be a forum for hollow expressions of sympathy and the propaganda of perpetrators of the crimes for which we demand and seek repair.
Our first task is institutional. Africa and the African diaspora need a permanent, coordinated reparations mechanism. This should include the African Union, CARICOM, African states, diaspora organizations, legal experts, historians, economists, cultural workers and youth movements. Such a body must not be symbolic. It must have a clear mandate to research, document, advocate, negotiate and monitor progress. It must build a unified African and diaspora position capable of engaging the United Nations, former slave-trading states, international courts, financial institutions, universities, churches, corporations and museums.
The second task is legal and diplomatic. The resolution creates political momentum, but that momentum must be organized. We need serious legal research into claims against states, companies, monarchies, banks, insurance firms, religious bodies, universities and other institutions that participated in or profited from enslavement and colonial exploitation. We need archives opened, records examined, profits traced and responsibility established. The law must not be allowed to serve only the powerful. International law must be compelled to confront the crimes through which the modern world was built.
The third task is educational. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade is still too often taught as an event that happened to Africans, rather than as a crime committed against humanity. It is often presented without sufficient attention to African resistance, African loss, African agency and African survival. A global reparations education campaign is necessary. Our schools, universities, media houses, museums and cultural institutions must teach the truth: that Africa was not poor by nature, that Africa was not backward by destiny, and that African underdevelopment was produced through violence, theft and domination. That Africa is poor because of capitalist exploitation.
The fourth task is developmental. Reparations must be linked to the material transformation of African and African-descended societies. This means debt cancellation, development financing, industrial support, technology transfer, educational investment, healthcare strengthening, infrastructure development and cultural renewal. It means supporting African sovereignty over land, minerals, oceans, knowledge systems and productive capacity. It means rejecting a global order in which Africa exports raw materials, imports finished goods, borrows under unjust conditions, and remains trapped in dependency.
The fifth task is cultural and spiritual repair. Enslavement was not only an economic crime. It was also an attack on names, languages, families, religions, identities and memory. Millions of Africans were violently separated from their homelands and forced into a world that tried to make them forget who they were. Reparatory justice must therefore include memorials, archives, museums, return journeys, cultural exchanges, language recovery projects and the restoration of African dignity. The return of stolen African artefacts must be treated not as generosity from museums, but as a legal and moral obligation.
We must also speak clearly about responsibility. Responsibility does not lie in abstraction. It is not enough to say that “history” did this. History did not build the ships. History did not finance the voyages. History did not write the laws. History did not insure human cargo. History did not run the plantations. Specific states, monarchies, companies, banks, churches, universities, merchants, plantation owners and colonial institutions participated in and benefited from this crime. Their successors cannot enjoy inherited wealth, inherited power and inherited prestige while rejecting inherited responsibility.
This does not require a dishonest history. It does not require us to deny the complexity of African societies or the presence of collaborators in some contexts. But no serious historical discussion can use complexity to obscure power. The principal architects, organizers, financiers and beneficiaries of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade were the imperial and commercial forces that transformed African captivity into a global system of accumulation. Historical honesty must clarify responsibility; it must not become an excuse for evasion.
The continuing impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa’s development is visible in the long chain that connects enslavement to colonialism, colonialism to neo-colonialism, and neo-colonialism to contemporary dependency. The forced removal of millions of Africans weakened productive systems, distorted political institutions, intensified conflict, damaged demographic development and interrupted paths of social transformation. Then came colonial conquest, which seized land, minerals, labour and sovereignty. Then came the modern system of unequal trade, debt dependency, military interference, financial control and cultural domination.
Africa’s present condition cannot be explained without this history. The wealth gap between Africa and the industrialized West is not the result of African laziness or European genius. It is the result of centuries of extraction. The poverty of many African communities is connected to the enrichment of others. The underdevelopment of Africa is tied to the over-development of the Atlantic world. Reparations, therefore, are not about begging. They are about correcting a global imbalance produced by crime.
The United Nations resolution gives us a new diplomatic instrument. But instruments must be used. Our generation must now convert this recognition into policy, law, education, mobilization and repair. We must build alliances between Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Europe and all communities of African descent. We must ensure that the descendants of the enslaved are not spoken about without being heard. We must ensure that governments do not reduce reparations to speeches. We must ensure that civil society, youth, scholars, workers, women’s movements and cultural organizations become part of this global campaign.
The next steps must be clear. Establish a permanent African and diaspora reparations commission. Coordinate diplomatic action at the United Nations, the African Union, CARICOM and other international platforms. Prepare legal claims against responsible states and institutions. Launch a global reparations education campaign. Build museums, archives and memorials. Demand the return of stolen cultural artefacts. Link debt cancellation and development financing to historical justice. Support African industrialization, healthcare, education, science, technology and cultural restoration. Create an annual progress review to measure implementation and hold institutions accountable.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, the question before us is not whether the past matters. The past is already present. It is present in the global distribution of wealth. It is present in racial inequality. It is present in distorted histories. It is present in the stolen artefacts displayed in foreign museums. It is present in the debt burdens of African states. It is present in the continued struggle of African people everywhere for dignity, sovereignty and justice.
The real question is whether we have the courage to repair what was broken.
Let this conference send a clear message: the United Nations resolution must not remain a statement of regret. It must become a programme of repair. It must become a framework for restitution. It must become a foundation for justice. It must become a pathway to African renewal.
We owe this to the ancestors who resisted the slave ships. We owe it to the generations who survived plantations, colonialism and racial terror. We owe it to the children of Africa and the diaspora who deserve a future free from the burdens imposed by historical crime.
From recognition, we must move to repair. From memory, we must move to mobilization. From declaration, we must move to justice. And from justice, we must build the full restoration, dignity and liberation of Africa and her scattered children across the world.
We cannot fail. We will be victorious!