Ghana has welcomed a report by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which calls for reparatory justice for the trafficking and enslavement of Africans.

In a statement posted on social media by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, September 1, the Ministry said the report represented a major step towards holding perpetrators of the transatlantic slave trade and racialised chattel slavery accountable.

According to the ministry, the committee’s guidance establishes that states are bound under the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to provide reparatory justice for the historical crimes.

It said the argument that slavery was lawful at the time it was practised could no longer be used to avoid responsibility.

“The long-used excuse that these crimes were lawful when they were committed no longer holds. The Committee itself calls this a paradigm shift,” the ministry stated.

It said the report provided a legal foundation for United Nations Resolution A/RES/80/250, which was spearheaded by Ghana and declared the transatlantic enslavement of Africans the gravest crime against humanity.

According to the ministry, the report signals a shift from merely acknowledging the injustice to recognising an obligation to remedy it.

“Recognition is becoming obligation. Apology, restitution, compensation and guarantees of non-repetition are no longer matters of goodwill, but of duty,” it said.

The ministry noted that the report was issued at a time when President John Dramani Mahama was presenting a comprehensive report at an extraordinary meeting of the African Union in Angola on the Ghana-led UN resolution.

President Mahama, the African Union Champion for Reparations, previously convened the Next Steps Summit in Accra to advance discussions on reparatory justice.

He is also expected to host a side event on restitution in New York during the 81st Session of the United Nations General Assembly.

“A crime does not rot. It was in this spirit that Ghana carried the cause of the enslaved to the United Nations. Today, that conviction stands affirmed in international law,” the ministry said.

It reaffirmed Ghana’s commitment to working with the African Union, the Caribbean Community and people of African descent across the diaspora to advance the campaign for reparations.

“The blood that binds us is stronger than the oceans that appeared to separate us,” the ministry added.