UN General Assembly Condemns the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, But Not the U.S. and Israel

By Alan Singer 

A resolution condemning the trans-Atlantic slave trade and demanding reparations for affected countries was adopted overwhelmingly by the United Nations General Assembly by a vote of 123 to 3 with 52 members abstaining. It was championed by Ghana and supported by a coalition of African and Caribbean countries. It emphasized that “the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity by reason of the definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality and enduring consequences that continue to structure the lives of all people through racialized regimes of labour, property and capital.” Two of the three countries that vote against the resolution were the United States and Israel.

The United States position was based on ignorance and bigotry. The Israeli vote was unmitigated hypocrisy.

U.S. Ambassador Dan Negrea stated the United States “must once again remind this body that the United Nations . . . was not founded to advance narrow specific interests and agendas, to establish niche International Days, or to create new costly meeting and reporting mandates.” Negrea stressed that the United States “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”

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Source: Daily Kos

Image source: Public Domain 

Alan Singer is the director of Secondary Education Social Studies Teaching Learning Technology at Hofstra University and the author of Class-Conscious Coal Miners. Blogs, tweets, essays, and interviews present his views and not those of the university.