In a historic but non-binding vote, 123 countries support a UN motion led by Ghana that calls for an apology, the return of artefacts and payment. France didn’t vote because there was no hierarchy of suffering.
As arguments about paying for past wrongs heated up, Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s foreign minister, explained why his country didn’t vote for a UN resolution last month that called the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity. Barrot said that calling it the gravest could make other genocides and crimes seem less important.
Barrot told Al Jazeera, “We abstained from that resolution because we refuse to put crimes against humanity in a hierarchy or put the suffering up against each other.”
France ended slavery on April 27, 1848, but slave owners were given 126 million francs in bonds with a 5% interest as payment. This meant that freed people had to work for their former masters until 1851, when they had to undergo hard training and follow strict rules about their work.
The Taubira Law, which was passed in 2001 in France, made slavery a crime and strongly condemned it. But the law was made weaker because bits that called for compensation were taken out after being criticised by some political groups, such as the children of colonial leaders.
In a vote on March 25, 2026, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) acknowledged that Africans had been enslaved and called for payments as a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs. The measure, which was started by Ghana, got 123 votes in favour; Argentina, Israel, and the US voted against it, and 52 countries, including the EU and the UK, did not vote at all.
The African Union’s 55 member states worked together last year to develop a unified vision for what slavery payments might look like. The motion asks member states to discuss official apologies, returning stolen items, making amends, providing compensation, and ensuring this doesn’t happen again. Decisions from the UNGA are not officially binding like decisions from the UN Security Council (UNSC), but they do represent the views of people around the world.
This decision is based on the idea that slavery was a turning point in world history because it happened on a large scale, for a long time, was planned and cruel, and had long-lasting effects. Today, its effects can still be seen in the way that work, wealth, and power are shared based on race.
President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana, speaking for the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean community (Caricom), was a key figure in the resolution’s creation. He said before the vote, “Let it be recorded that when history called, we did what was right for the memory of the millions who suffered the shame of the slave trade and those who continue to suffer racial discrimination.”
The resolution was written with the help of experts who say it is an effort to get “political recognition at the highest level” for one of the darkest periods in human history.
How the international slave trade began
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, between 12 and 15 million Africans were taken as slaves to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade. Soon after Europeans settled in the Americas, the native workers were dying because they were getting sick, being abused, and having too much work to do on farms. Plantation owners moved to African slaves because they thought they would be better at large-scale, labour-intensive farming.
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The three way deal
As part of this three-way trade, guns and clothes were sent from Europe to Africa, slaves were brought from Africa to the Americas, and things like sugar, cotton, and tobacco were sent from the Americas to Europe.
Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, all very powerful at the time, made a lot of money from the transatlantic slave trade because they controlled the ships, colonies, and markets.
Banks, shipping companies, and trade leaders used the profits from slavery and the plantation economy to invest in factories, ports, and other infrastructure. This helped parts of Europe and North America become industrialised in the early 1800s.
People who were slaves and their children and grandchildren were also routinely refused access to legal rights, land, and cash. This meant that they didn’t get to share in the wealth that their hard work created. This trend is like the caste system, which helped keep economic differences between classes for a long time.
A lot of Africans who were captured were forced to live in dark, stuffy holds where they were often chained together and had very little food and water and almost no place to move. About 10–20% of slaves died crossing the Atlantic, either from disease, physical abuse, or suicide. Those who made it to the Americas were physically broken when they got there, but they were still forced to work on plantations for the rest of their lives.
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Slave revolts and ending slavery
Africans who were slaves fought back in many ways: on ships, on farms, by running away to live in groups in rural places, and by quietly keeping their identities. Even though they were being severely repressed, they kept their languages, faiths, and traditional traditions alive. Slavery and trade went on for hundreds of years, but slaves’ defiance helped bring down the system from the inside.
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