The Senior Presidential Aide and Advisor to President John Dramani Mahama, Joyce Bawah Mogtari, has called on the international community to move beyond the historic recognition of slavery as a crime against humanity and begin charting a path towards meaningful reparative justice.

According to her, while the landmark United Nations resolution represented a major breakthrough for Africa and the descendants of enslaved peoples, the world must now confront the difficult question of what concrete actions should follow.

In a Facebook post on Thursday, June 18, ahead of the High-Level Consultative Conference on the Next Steps to the Landmark United Nations Resolution on the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans, Madam Bawah Mogtari said the global acknowledgement of slavery’s horrors was a significant moral achievement.

She noted that Ghana and Africa, working alongside the international community, had succeeded in securing recognition of a historical reality that had long been overlooked.

“For President John Dramani Mahama, historian and African Union Champion for Reparations and Reparatory Justice, this was a moral victory,” she stated.

Madam Bawah Mogtari explained that President Mahama had championed efforts to ensure the recognition was not merely symbolic but enduring.

She recalled that the President described the resolution as “a pathway to healing” and “a safeguard against forgetting”, stressing the need to tackle the structural inequalities, racial discrimination and economic disparities that continue to stem from centuries of enslavement and exploitation.

She added that, as African Union Champion for Reparations, President Mahama has consistently advocated a broader agenda that includes reparative justice, the return of stolen African artefacts and fairer access to wealth derived from Africa’s resources.

According to her, the upcoming conference in Ghana will provide an opportunity for scholars, historians and policymakers to consider practical next steps, including reparations, the repatriation of cultural and historical artefacts, and the establishment of institutions that preserve the memory of slavery.

“The spotlight is on Ghana,” she said, noting that the conference would help shape global discussions on how to honour the millions whose lives were disrupted by the transatlantic slave trade and ensure that their stories remain part of humanity’s collective memory.