UN committee says countries legally obliged to provide reparations for transatlantic slave trade

Countries are legally obliged to provide broad reparations for harms resulting from both direct and indirect involvement in the transatlantic African slave trade, a United Nations committee said on Monday.

Issuing a fresh interpretation of an important international rights treaty, the UN watchdog said the accord obliges countries to work to redress the harms caused by slavery and the continuing consequences.

"States parties must implement comprehensive reparatory measures for people of African descent, covering all aspects of remedies," the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said in its findings, presented in a document entitled General Recommendation-40.

It stressed that reparatory justice combined "a wide range of measures conceived as monetary, non-monetary and structural."

The document, which was approved last week but only published on Monday, is expected to provide a powerful new tool supporting reparations claims.

This is "a watershed moment," committee member Pela Boker-Wilson told the AFP news agency.

The CERD panel is composed of 18 independent rights experts.

Tasked with monitoring implementation of the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, it provided a new interpretation of the treaty's obligations.

Paradigm shift

The convention counts 182 countries as parties, including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Portugal and other nations that were heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, which from the 16th to 19th century saw millions of African men, women and children shipped to the Americas to work in brutal and often deadly conditions.

In many of those same countries, black people continue to face discrimination and poverty today.

"Confronting historical injustice can not be separated from the fight against present-day racial discrimination," Boker-Wilson said.

The Liberian human rights lawyer maintained that the committee's finding brought about "a paradigm shift" in the framing of reparatory justice from a simple historical responsibility to a present-day legal obligation.

It clarifies that countries are required to take "active measures that are geared towards restoring the dignity, the justice and equality that people of African descent deserve."

While the CERD's findings are not legally-binding, Boker-Wilson stressed that they carry "significant authoritative weight" and could be used by officials to inform judicial review, by courts as an interpretative tool, as well as to support litigation.

The fresh analysis comes after the UN General Assembly in March adopted a landmark resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as "the gravest crime against humanity," despite opposition from the United States and some European countries.

Boker-Wilson said the United States and other countries should "welcome" the new findings, noting that the last review of US adherence to the convention on discrimination, in 2022, had found issues with racial profiling and disparities in the criminal justice system.

'Eliminate structural racism'

While the campaign around reparatory justice has been heavily focused on the United States, Boker-Wilson stressed that "it's a global initiative."

The transatlantic slave trade "distorted global economic relations by distributing unjustly accumulated wealth across societies and borders, creating shared responsibility for its enduring effects," the document points out.

Beyond monetary compensation, the required reparations encompass everything from restitution to rehabilitation and memorialisation.

And it pointed to an educational obligation "to investigate and disclose the full truth about transatlantic chattel slavery."