Yesterday, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution which described the “racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.” The resolution was proposed by Ghana on behalf of the African Group of 54 and passed by 123 votes to 3 with 52 abstentions.
The three who opposed were the United States, Israel and Argentina. The Irish state was among those who abstained, the vast majority of them western European countries along with Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Fiji, Ukraine, Japan and Ukraine.
The reason why the United States opposed and the others abstained has overwhelmingly to do with the fear that the motion might become the basis for “a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”
That such a prospect is not delusory was underlined by several references yesterday, including by the Barbados poet Esther Philips who told delegates that “there can be no peace without justice – reparatory justice.”
Argentina did not explain its opposition – it was neither a significant participant or destination in the vile trade – and some observers put it down to Milei’s general antipathy to the United Nations itself and his own devotion to all things Trumpian.
Israel’s vote has likewise not been explained officially although unnamed officials were mentioned as having echoed the concerns over reparations. Given that Israel did not exist back then it is more likely connected to the danger from their perspective that reparations might be sought at some future stage for displaced Palestinians.
The Irish government has issued no separate statement explaining its abstention but presumably shares the position of the EU bloc as a whole. That was put by the EU representative at the UN, Gabriella Michaelidou, who said that they had no problem denouncing the “scale of the atrocity” but had concerns about establishing an “historical hierarchy” of crimes against humanity.
Not to mention that some EU states such as Spain and Portugal might be potential targets for reparation demands. Indeed, if some of the spurious claims made in relation to this country and slavery were to be accepted then each of us might find a new direct debit to garnish our incomes in order to compensate our ‘victims’ from yesteryear.
As with all matters pertaining to international politics and historical crimes there is huge hypocrisy around this issue as there has been around other moralistic resolutions at the UN and other forums including the European Parliament.
It might be recalled that large sections of the left, including the GUE/NGL group of which Sinn Féin was and remains a member, opposed a 2019 motion that had proposed that August 23 become an annual remembrance day for the victims of Communism and Nazism.
Sinn Féin and their comrades had taken exception to the reference to the Stalin/Hitler Pact as the event that triggered World War II. Not to mention that there was reluctance to commemorate the tens of millions who were victims of the far left in power.
There is also much current duplicity and dissimulation on slavery. Russia, which now looks favourably on the legacy of Stalin whose economy was built on millions of state slaves, and China which continues to be accused of holding millions of forced labourers, are hardly in a position to be lecturing anyone about historical guilt and reparations. North Korea voted in favour of the motion and heads the global slavery index as the worst offender.
Nor are the African countries standing aloft on the moral mountain. Slavery was long a feature of African societies and the main suppliers of the slaves to the Ottoman and European and north American slave traders were the African tribes which captured and sold them. And it remains a virtually unbroken tradition in many parts of the continent.
Panashe Chigumadzi who drafted the African Union’s document arguing for reparations referred to the need to turn the moral judgement into a “continuous legal reality.” In other words, the moral condemnation should be followed by cash.
She also mentioned “trafficking” in the context of the historical slave trade and in doing so inadvertently highlighted one of the central flaws of the motion and the demand for reparations.
The inconvenient truth is that Africa is a main source of humans who are trafficked internally and externally for use by other humans as sexual or economic slaves. There are an estimated 50 million people living in slavery, of whom more than 7 million are in Africa.
Many of the slaves found in the gulf states and other countries, often as trafficked sex slaves including instances in Ireland, have been sold originally by African gangs and are often still controlled by African gangs. The main one of these is the Nigerian Black Axe which increasingly features in crime reporting by Fatima Gunning and others.
Ghana itself, whose President John Mahama yesterday made an emotional speech at the UN about historical slavery, is home to an estimated 91,000 slaves. Sort that out pal, before you start to guilt trip people who have no responsibility or moral burden in the least for African slavery.
Others queuing up for the reparations bowl include Nigeria, 1.6 million slaves; South Africa, 158,000 slaves; Uganda, 190,000 slaves; Congo, 407,000 slaves and of course Somalia with 98,000 slaves.
States which host this abomination to humanity are in no position to claim that it is either an historical artefact (in which their own elites fully participated) or grounds for demanding untold billions from people who not only carry no historical debt for slavery but would not tolerate it and do not tolerate it among their own people.
Nor ought Irish people have to browbeaten about this by a member of the Nigerian elite such as Dr. Ebun Joseph given her own country’s historical legacy and current shameful position at the heart of the modern slave trade.