On March 25, 2026, over 160 years since racialized chattel slavery was mostly abolished globally, the UN General Assembly, spearheaded and backed by Ghana, passed a non-binding resolution recognizing “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.”
The resolution received 123 votes in favor, with three countries — Argentina, Israel, and the United States — voting against it. 52 countries abstained, primarily consisting of the United Kingdom, all 27 European Union member states, and several other Western-aligned nations.
Although the resolution was four centuries too late, the disreputable behavior of historical colonial powers such as the US and the UK, after the resolution passed, illustrated the utter neglect and lack of accountability these imperial hegemons harbor despite their active roles in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Scramble for Africa.
According to an Al Jazeera article, several Western leaders adamantly chose not to entertain even a mere dialogue on the subject, with critics arguing that today’s states and institutions should not be held responsible for historical wrongs. Both the EU and the US voiced concerns that the resolution could imply a hierarchy among crimes against humanity, treating some as more serious than others.
However, the ignorant responses from the US and the EU are, at best, immensely laughable and hypocritical when we analyze how historical events such as the Holocaust are treated in comparison to the 15 million Congolese natives who died at the merciless, brutal, and genocidal hand of King Leopold II of Belgium during the Scramble for Africa.
The preposterous notion that the West attributes to any talk of slavery reparations elucidates their racist biases, especially given that Germany has paid over 85 billion euros in reparations to Israel following the Holocaust. Belgium, on the other hand, can barely utter a sincere apology, let alone pay any amount in reparations for the genocide, mutilation, and violence they barbarically inflicted on millions of Congolese people.
A hierarchy among crimes against humanity already exists. It is one where the pain and suffering of white people are held to a much greater international importance than that of any other people of color. Whereas Black people, if lucky, are left to pick up the scraps of care or recognition that might remain. What Western nations are truly afraid of is not creating some self-fabricated unfair hierarchy, but an international system where their power and influence are not just contested, but eroded to favor the equitable interests of the Global South.
This is evident in the subsequent response of Reform UK, a far-right anti-immigration and populist political party in Britain. Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said on April 7, 2026, that it would deny new visas, including tourism and work, for African and Caribbean countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain, a move promptly condemned by the Caribbean reparations commissions as a “legacy of toxic racism.”
Reform UK, despite holding a small number of seats in parliament, is polling strongly ahead of Britain’s next general election, given the public’s growing dissent with Keir Starmer’s leadership. The party’s home affairs lead, Zia Yusuf, benightedly argued that calls for reparations obscure the country’s role in abolishing slavery and enforcing its ban globally, describing such demands as offensive.
The inherently racist political agenda of Zia Yusuf and Reform UK as a whole clearly highlights how history, when told through the Eurocentric lens of white fragility, can be skewed in such a way that the United Kingdom truly believes that it should be revered for putting an “end” to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a dehumanizing and genocidal system that it created and let flourish and persist for over 400 years. Britain’s misguided sense of moral superiority for slavery’s eventual abolition is why slavery reparations in 2026 are needed more than ever before.
More importantly, when I call for slavery reparations in this article, I move past the metaphoric meaning it holds in the West, and towards a decolonial and practical approach for a radical, substantive enforcement.
The Western fear towards acknowledging their role in slavery, and therefore providing reparations, stems from the historical and present reality where their massive economies, defense spending, and multinational corporations were all made possible because of the vast wealth they accumulated, not just from slavery, but also from their violent colonial regimes in Africa and the broader Global South.
Consequently, voting for the UN resolution entails a phenomenon much greater than solely providing financial compensation to Africa and the Caribbean. It ascribes a world where the domestic economies of the West and the encompassing international system are rendered illegitimate as they were built and founded on the profit of the pain, suffering, and impoverishment of Indigenous Black Africans.
Slavery reparations delve deeper than simply providing financial compensation, a tactic that only scratches the surface in addressing the systemic destruction of African cultures, languages, and way of life. It involves issuing sincere formal apologies, returning stolen artifacts obtained during colonial rule, decolonizing historical narratives that prioritize the European quest for power over the harm and damage done to Black Africans and their land, and radically reconstructing the international system that continues to benefit from Africa’s “underdevelopment.”
Ultimately, slavery reparations defy the Western hegemonic status quo and open up a world where Africa and the Global South can thrive, free from neo-colonial interventions and infringement on their sovereignty. It instills fear in Western leaders as this resolution stands to threaten the illegitimate power and influence they hold in the global world order. As seen with the behaviors from the West, Africa’s liberation can only be had in an international system that favors pluralism, not the Western-imposed “universalist” world view.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
