On March 25, the United Nations General Assembly — with 123 yes votes, three no votes and 52 abstentions — passed a historic resolution presented by John Mahama, the president of Ghana, to officially characterize the enslavement of millions of African people as the “gravest crime against humanity.” While the resolution is non-binding, it also requested that the U.N. member states apologize for the institution of enslavement and more concretely, that these states make a financial pledge towards a reparations fund for people of African descent.

March 25 has been designated by the U.N. as an International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

It was appropriate for President Mahama to present this resolution since millions of Africans were transported in chains from Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries. This resulted in Ghana especially having the largest number of enslavement forts and castles in the world.

“The trafficking of enslaved Africans and the centuries of racialized chattel enslavement that followed have not been resolved,” stated Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Ghana’s foreign minister on March 24. (New York Times, March 25)

The U.N. resolution coincides with the African Union, which represents the aspirations of all countries on the African continent, declaring 2026 until 2035 as the Decade of Action on Reparations. The kidnapping of millions of African people for enslavement laid the material basis for Africa evolving into the most underdeveloped continent.

Who voted no? Who abstained?

To no one’s surprise, the United States, Israel and Argentina voted against the resolution. The U.S. began to enslave African people in the early 1600s until the Civil War, which ended in a military defeat of institutionalized Southern slavery in 1865. However, the legacy of slavery continues today and is now embodied by the white supremacist President Donald Trump and his reactionary administration.

Trump issued an edict when he took office over a year ago to remove and defund all federal exhibits and monuments referring to the atrocities under enslavement and the resistance to it that lives on today. In reference to the teaching of enslavement, Trump states that he wants to eradicate the “radical indoctrination in K-12 schooling” to show that “slavery was not that bad” (ad nauseum). (New York Times, March 25)

Israel is an illegal, settler-colonial, racist, Nazi-like, apartheid state.Even before its founding in May 1948, Zionist forces had violently and systematically displaced millions of Palestinians. Israel has occupied Palestinian lands by heinous criminal acts, including a current genocide in Gaza and illegal Zionist settlements in the West Bank. And Argentina is currently led by a right-wing U.S. puppet, President Javier Milei.

Regarding the 52 abstentions, half of them were made by member countries belonging to the European Union. It is important to know that a number of these members — rich capitalist countries like Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain — are all former colonizers of Africa and handsomely profited off enslavement, including the transatlantic slave trade.

Connection to other crimes

Some of the countries that abstained stated that the Ghanaian resolution was limited to just one crime of humanity and not to others. And while it is true that there are nationally oppressed peoples, historically and presently, who have been superexploited by imperialism for the theft of their labor resulting in low wages, theft of their lands and resources, this should not be used as an excuse to not show support for the Ghanaian resolution. No oppression should be pitted against another. Each has its own merit.

Not supporting this resolution lets imperialism off the hook regarding taking political and financial responsibility for their sordid roles for other crimes against humanity, like the genocide of Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas beginning with Chrisopher Columbus in 1492; the occupation of Palestine; apartheid in southern Africa that legally ended over 30 years ago; the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; the criminal 60-plus years of the U.S. blockade against the Cuban Revolution; and the current U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.

Many of these same 123 countries, also worthy of reparations rooted in imperialist domination, still chose to show solidarity with African peoples with their yes votes.

This passing of the resolution has once again helped to elevate the global struggle for reparations not seen since the historic 2001 World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, sponsored by the U.N.

The writer is the editor of “Marxism, Reparations and the Black Freedom Struggle” that can be downloaded at workers.org/book/marxism-reparations-and-the-black-freedom-struggle/.