‘Slavery is not a thing of the past’: UN supports call for reparations
UN Experts Demand Structural Reparations for Slavery’s Enduring Legacy
Qinilo.com – As the global community observed the International Day of People of African Descent on Monday, the United Nations Committee against Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a pointed declaration: the wounds inflicted by centuries of enslavement have not healed with the passage of time. Rather, those wounds persist in the architecture of modern inequality, embedding themselves in education systems, healthcare access, economic opportunity, and environmental exposure. The committee’s message was unequivocal — states must move beyond symbolic gestures and implement comprehensive restorative justice that pairs financial compensation with restitution, rehabilitation, and deep structural reform.
A Mandate Beyond Apology
The committee, composed of 18 independent human rights experts serving four-year mandates, examined the periodic reports that member states file on their efforts to combat racism and discrimination. In its latest pronouncement, the body went well beyond reviewing compliance. It articulated a vision of accountability that extends into the present day, insisting that the mere lapse of decades cannot excuse governments from confronting historical wrongs or from adopting what it termed “appropriate measures of restorative justice and accountability for these crimes.”
The experts framed their position in terms that leave little room for incrementalism. They argued that dismantling racial discrimination in any meaningful, durable sense is impossible unless societies commit fully to reviewing and correcting the continuing consequences of the transatlantic slave trade and of racialised slavery as an institution.
“The elimination of racial discrimination cannot be effective, complete or sustainable without a full commitment to review and redress the ongoing harms and consequences of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised slavery.”
To translate that principle into practice, the committee urged governments to adopt national action plans with binding timelines. These plans, it stressed, must be developed in direct consultation with communities of African descent and with the dedicated reparations committees those communities have established. Without such participatory design, the experts warned, reparations risk becoming top-down exercises that miss the lived realities of those they purport to serve.
Reforming the Machinery of Inequality
A central pillar of the committee’s call is legislative and institutional transformation. States were asked to repeal or revise statutes, regulations, and administrative policies that perpetuate racial hierarchy or that stand in the way of restorative justice. The demand is not limited to symbolic decolonisation of language; it reaches into the operational logic of institutions that continue to reproduce racial disparities in hiring, lending, policing, and resource allocation.
The experts were equally clear that verbal gestures, however sincere, are insufficient on their own.
“Acknowledgments and apologies should be accompanied by concrete measures and should not replace other appropriate forms of redress.”
Accountability Beyond the State
In a move that broadens the scope of historical accountability, CERD examined the role of private and non-state actors in the machinery of enslavement. Religious institutions, universities, commercial enterprises, banks, insurers, and other financial bodies that participated in, facilitated, or profited from the trafficking of enslaved Africans were identified as bearing continuing responsibilities. The committee called on states to ensure these actors contribute meaningfully to restorative justice — by acknowledging their historical role, by opening archives that remain closed to descendant communities, and by funding reparation measures in proportion to their involvement and the benefits they derived from it.
This dimension of the statement carries practical weight. Many of the financial instruments that underwrote the slave trade — insurance policies, shipping credits, commodity exchanges — evolved into the modern banking and insurance sectors. Universities that received endowments tied to plantation economies still operate under those institutional names. Religious bodies that administered enslaved populations in colonial territories continue to hold property and influence in the same regions. The committee’s framing positions these entities not as peripheral footnotes but as integral participants whose obligations have not expired.
The Present-Day Face of an Old Wound
Committee members did not confine their analysis to historical abstraction. They pointed specifically to racialised violence, entrenched stereotypes, and structural barriers that produce measurable disparities in educational attainment, health outcomes, economic mobility, and environmental security. These conditions, they noted, have been reinforced by contemporary policies that perpetuate anti-Black racism, ensuring that the architecture of slavery’s aftermath remains load-bearing in present-day governance.
“Systemic racial discrimination and structural inequalities”
Those words, drawn from the committee’s own language, capture the central claim: the harms linked to the trafficking of enslaved Africans and to racialised slavery are not relics. They are active, institutionalised, and reproduced daily through policy choices that could be otherwise made.
Why This Matters Now
The statement lands at a moment when reparations debates have moved from academic journals into legislative chambers across the Americas, Europe, and Africa. National commissions, truth-and-reconciliation frameworks, and community-led reparations councils have multiplied in recent years. CERD’s intervention adds the weight of a treaty-monitoring body to those conversations, signalling that the international human-rights architecture views restorative justice not as a political preference but as a legal obligation flowing from existing instruments against racial discrimination. For descendant communities long dismissed as asking for sentiment rather than justice, the committee’s language — specific, deadline-oriented, and inclusive of non-state actors — represents a substantive shift in the global normative conversation about what accountability for slavery actually requires.
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