The resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on 25 March was already problematic because of what it omitted. By describing the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”, it did more than simply condemn slavery: it appeared to establish a hierarchy among forms of human suffering. Above all, it almost entirely ignored the other systems of slavery that have marked the history of Africa and the world, foremost among them the Arab-Muslim slave trade.
Trafficking networks supplied the Middle East, North Africa and certain regions of Asia long before Europeans arrived on the African coast. This trade continued for centuries, in some cases well into the 20th century. African powers and kingdoms also actively participated in the capture and sale of slaves. Recalling these facts in no way diminishes European responsibility for the transatlantic slave trade but simply helps to restore its historical complexity.
When the UN no longer limits itself to calling for the symbolic condemnation of slave traders but moves from remembrance to reparations, this historical oversimplification becomes all the more reprehensible.
Time to Pay
The CERD’s recommendation indeed marks a shift in tone. The Committee asserts that States Parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination – a UN treaty adopted by the General Assembly in 1965 – now have obligations regarding the lingering consequences of slavery and colonialism. The argument is therefore no longer merely historical: it has become contemporary and legal, with financial implications.
The CERD is not issuing a judgment individually condemning Western states, and its recommendation does not, in and of itself, amount to a court ruling ordering the payment of compensation. But it provides a powerful institutional framework for those seeking reparations and encourages states to move from symbolic recognition to concrete action.
If Western states must now answer for the contemporary consequences of a system of slavery that ended generations ago, why should this logic not apply to other societies that practiced slavery? Who will demand reparations for the Arab-Muslim slave trade? Who will demand apologies from the states that maintained slavery well into the second half of the 20th century?
No one will ask these questions, because the subject is too sensitive today. The Committee, established under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, was not conceived as a tool for redressing the past, but that logic has now been reversed. Contemporary issues are intimately linked to the struggle over the past, as acknowledged by Liberian attorney Pela Boker-Wilson, a member of the Committee, who believes that “confronting historical justice cannot be separated from the fight against contemporary racial discrimination”. In this context, highlighting African and Muslim responsibilities would be considered counterproductive, if not dangerous.
The UN is effectively asking people today to pay reparations for crimes committed by their ancestors. The idea is deeply problematic, however appealing it may be to those who portray Europe’s historic nations as the source of virtually every modern injustice. Europeans are thus encouraged to see their history as a debt they can never fully repay, while the responsibilities of other societies fade from the picture.
The Forgotten History of Abolition
This interpretation is all the more problematic because it erases an essential dimension of Western history: abolition, as classical liberal French essayist Ferghane Azihari has argued. The West obviously did not invent slavery, but it gave rise to the intellectual, religious and political movements that ultimately radically challenged this millennia-old institution.
European and American abolitionism developed in the face of considerable economic interests. Men dedicated their lives to convincing their contemporaries that the ownership of a human being was morally intolerable. States eventually banned the slave trade, and then slavery itself, sometimes at the cost of significant conflicts and sacrifices. This chapter of history – long, yet nonetheless marked by moments of glory – does not constitute an absolution of the past, but it is an integral part of it.
The dominant narrative tends to reverse this perspective: the fact that the West practiced slavery becomes proof of its civilizational guilt, while the fact that it also played a decisive role in its abolition becomes almost secondary.
Yet there is a fundamental distinction here. Slavery was not exclusively a Western phenomenon. Abolition, on the other hand, constituted a moral upheaval of which Western powers can legitimately take pride. There was, on the part of the colonizing nations of Europe, a form of repentance expressed through abolition, achieved after long political and intellectual struggles.
Reconciliation Needs Honesty
The dangerous trajectory of demands for slavery reparations disregards this fact. An entire civilization is being invited to view itself as structurally guilty for the present-day consequences of others’ misfortune. In this case, the difficulties facing contemporary Africa cannot be explained solely in terms of the responsibility of the formerly dominant West. Historical justice should reject oversimplified narratives in order to distinguish plunder from trade, slaveholders from abolitionists, soldiers from missionaries and colonial domination from the broader achievements of a civilization.
The UN claims to promote reconciliation, but reconciliation cannot arise from a one-sided memory. An honest history of slavery must be able to acknowledge several truths simultaneously: the transatlantic slave trade was an abominable crime; other slave trades existed and persisted for centuries; African actors participated in these systems; Muslim societies maintained slavery for a very long time; and the West ultimately produced the intellectual and political forces that led to its abolition. These truths do not cancel each other out but complement one another.
Today, the UN, in the name of the fight against discrimination, is thus helping to establish a new hierarchy of historical responsibility: repentance for Westerners, innocence for others. The former bear the debt; the latter are entitled to claim compensation.
In March, 55 countries abstained from or rejected the resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity. They were right: now that money is involved, it is important not to let the United Nations – conceived as an instrument of international justice – transform a partial memory into a perpetual debt.
