World Conference against Racism opens in Durban

The First Pan-African Conference on Reparations adopted the Abuja Proclamation, framing slavery, the slave trade and colonialism as harms requiring repair. It called on the international community...

MP Bernie Grant introduced an Early Day Motion welcoming the Abuja conference and urging recognition of the international community’s moral debt. Parliamentary advocacy translated a Pan-African...

The General Assembly decided to convene the World Conference against Racism, creating a global intergovernmental forum where African, Caribbean and diaspora advocates could press historical...

The Rome Statute lists enslavement among crimes against humanity when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population, with knowledge of the attack. Its...

Civil-society organizations met before the World Conference against Racism. The NGO forum advanced a more direct account of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and reparations than many governments...

The World Conference adopted the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action. Paragraph 13 recognizes that slavery and the slave trade, particularly the transatlantic trade, are crimes against humanity...

The UN Commission on Human Rights established a dedicated expert body to study problems of racial discrimination faced by people of African descent and recommend measures. The institutional pathway...

The General Assembly adopted resolution 62/122, establishing 25 March as the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade and calling for a permanent...

The first annual UN observance made the memory of enslaved Africans and the transatlantic trade part of the organization’s public calendar. Commemoration can challenge historical erasure, but...

General Assembly resolution 64/169 proclaimed 2011 an International Year for People of African Descent, aiming to strengthen national action and international cooperation. The resolution centered...