Dr Win­ford James

On March 25, 2026, the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion for­mal­ly deem­ing the transat­lantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty.” The res­o­lu­tion was tabled by Ghana’s Pres­i­dent John Dra­mani Ma­hama /Boateng on be­half of the African Union and, ac­cord­ing to DeepSeek, in­cludes the fol­low­ing key points/calls to ac­tion:

• It de­clares the traf­fick­ing and en­slave­ment of most­ly Africans over 400 years (that is, four cen­turies) as “the gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty” due to its scale, du­ra­tion, and en­dur­ing im­pli­ca­tions and con­se­quences.

• It urges the rel­e­vant mem­ber states to con­sid­er apol­o­gis­ing for the slave trade and con­tribut­ing to a repa­ra­tions fund; and

• It de­mands the re­turn of cul­tur­al arte­facts that were loot­ed dur­ing the colo­nial pe­ri­od.

One hun­dred and three (123) mem­bers vot­ed in favour of the res­o­lu­tion, three against, and 52 ab­stained.

Those who sup­port­ed the res­o­lu­tion—the African Union, Cari­com, and the Glob­al South—es­sen­tial­ly ar­gued that there was a need to ac­knowl­edge the his­tor­i­cal truth, treat with the lega­cy of racial in­equal­i­ty at the lev­el of the world’s top body for rule mak­ing, and pur­sue repar­a­tive jus­tice.

Of those who re­ject­ed the res­o­lu­tion—the US, Ar­genti­na, and Is­rael—the US es­sen­tial­ly stat­ed that it did not recog­nise a le­gal right to repa­ra­tions for his­tor­i­cal wrongs.

And of those who ab­stained —the UK, most EU na­tions, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, and Japan—the UK stat­ed that, while they recog­nised the “un­told harm” done in the past, they did not think they should be held re­spon­si­ble for ac­tions tak­en in the colo­nial past.

The res­o­lu­tion is not legal­ly bind­ing, but its sup­port­ers wel­come its adop­tion by the As­sem­bly as a his­toric moral and diplo­mat­ic vic­to­ry for African and Caribbean coun­tries.

I my­self see the adop­tion in such terms, and I hope for the day when the As­sem­bly will take steps to make such res­o­lu­tions bind­ing. And I hope the res­o­lu­tion makes its way in­to the his­to­ry and so­cial stud­ies cur­ric­u­la of the schools of the world, es­pe­cial­ly of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Glob­al South.

What a thing! The transat­lantic slave trade is des­ig­nat­ed the gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty, and I am on­ly now see­ing it that way.

For those who did not take his­to­ry in high school or took it with­out be­ing pro­vid­ed with much de­tail, let me pro­vide some use­ful in­for­ma­tion from Wikipedia be­low. I took his­to­ry, but I am see­ing for the first time much of the in­for­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by Wikipedia. It helps give con­text to the des­ig­na­tion of the slave trade as “the gravest crime against hu­man­i­ty”.

“The transat­lantic slave trade in­volved the trans­porta­tion by slave traders of en­slaved African peo­ple to the Amer­i­c­as (or “The New World”). Eu­ro­pean slave ships reg­u­lar­ly used the tri­an­gu­lar trade and its Mid­dle Pas­sage. Eu­ro­peans es­tab­lished a coastal slave trade in the 15th cen­tu­ry, and the trade to the Amer­i­c­as be­gan in the 16th cen­tu­ry, last­ing through the 19th cen­tu­ry. The vast ma­jor­i­ty of those who were trans­port­ed in the transat­lantic slave trade were from Cen­tral Africa and West­ern Africa and had been sold by West and Cen­tral Africa slave traders to Eu­ro­pean slave traders, while oth­ers had been cap­tured di­rect­ly by the slave traders in coastal raids.

“The Por­tuguese, in the 16th cen­tu­ry, were the first to trans­port slaves across the At­lantic. In 1526, they com­plet­ed the first transat­lantic slave voy­age to Brazil. Oth­er Eu­ro­peans soon fol­lowed. Shipown­ers re­gard­ed the slaves as car­go to be trans­port­ed to the Amer­i­c­as as quick­ly and cheap­ly as pos­si­ble, there to be sold to work on cof­fee, to­bac­co, co­coa, sug­ar, and cot­ton plan­ta­tions, gold and sil­ver mines, rice fields, the con­struc­tion in­dus­try, cut­ting tim­ber for ships as skilled labour and as do­mes­tic ser­vants.

“The first en­slaved Africans sent to the Eng­lish colonies were clas­si­fied as in­den­tured ser­vants.

“By the mid­dle of the 17th cen­tu­ry, slav­ery had hard­ened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their fu­ture off­spring be­ing legal­ly the prop­er­ty of their own­ers, as chil­dren born to slave moth­ers were al­so slaves. As prop­er­ty, the peo­ple were con­sid­ered mer­chan­dise or units of labour, and were sold at mar­ket prices with oth­er goods and ser­vices.

“The ma­jor At­lantic slave trad­ing na­tions, in or­der of trade vol­ume, were Por­tu­gal, Britain, Spain, France, the Nether­lands, the Unit­ed States, and Den­mark. Sev­er­al had es­tab­lished out­posts on the African coast, where they pur­chased slaves from lo­cal African lead­ers.

“Slaves were im­pris­oned in trad­ing posts known as fac­to­ries while await­ing ship­ment. Cur­rent es­ti­mates are that about 12 mil­lion to 12.8 mil­lion Africans were shipped across the At­lantic over a span of 400 years. The num­ber pur­chased by the traders was con­sid­er­ably high­er, as the pas­sage had a high death rate, with be­tween 1.2 and 2.4 mil­lion dy­ing dur­ing the voy­age, and mil­lions more in sea­son­ing camps in the Caribbean af­ter ar­rival in the New World. Mil­lions of peo­ple al­so died as a re­sult of slave raids, wars, and dur­ing trans­port to the coast for sale to Eu­ro­pean slave traders.

“In the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, sev­er­al gov­ern­ments is­sued apolo­gies for the transat­lantic slave trade.”

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.