By Ashiadey Dotse
President John Dramani Mahama has declared that a global resolution recognising the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity serves as a critical safeguard against historical amnesia, urging the world to confront the full weight of slavery’s atrocities and pursue reparative justice.
Speaking at the High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice convened at United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday March 24, 2026, President Mahama said the resolution provides a collective moral framework for remembrance, healing, and accountability.
“This resolution stands as a safeguard against forgetting,” he stated, emphasising that the global community must “reclaim racial equality, the dignity of Africans, and the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved.”
The President explained that the declaration recognising the trafficking and enslavement of Africans as one of the gravest crimes against humanity allows the world to bear witness to the suffering of an estimated 18 million men, women, and children over four centuries.
According to him, the resolution is not only symbolic but also a pathway toward healing and reparative justice for Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the wider African diaspora.
“I speak these words not only for Ghana but in solidarity with all people of good conscience,” he said.
President Mahama painted a harrowing picture of the transatlantic slave trade, describing how enslaved Africans were stripped of their dignity, identities, and basic humanity from capture on the continent to their eventual sale in foreign lands.
He recounted how victims were held naked in dungeons, chained and forced onto ships where they endured the brutal Middle Passage under inhumane conditions. Many did not survive the journey, with estimates indicating that between 10 and 15 percent perished, while others chose death over enslavement.
Upon arrival, he said, the enslaved were treated as commodities inspected, auctioned, and sold to the highest bidder before being subjected to forced labour on plantations and in mines across the Americas.
“They were renamed, dehumanised, and branded like cattle,” he said, noting that their African identities were erased and replaced with imposed names and labels.
The President further highlighted the economic foundations of slavery, stressing that it thrived because it relied on virtually free labour.
“Let’s not mince words. Business was booming because when labour is virtually free, profit margins are huge,” he said, adding that African lives were treated as disposable commodities in a system driven by profit.
He cautioned against the tendency to gloss over the brutal realities of slavery in favour of more comfortable narratives about abolition, insisting that the details of the system must be fully acknowledged.
“We can’t afford to look away; this is precisely the part when we should pay close attention because the devil is in the details,” he noted.
Providing historical context, President Mahama cited major destinations of enslaved Africans, including Brazil, Jamaica, the United States, and Barbados, where millions were forced into labour under harsh and often deadly conditions.
He also referenced early legal frameworks, such as the 1661 Barbados Slave Code and the 1662 doctrine of partus sequitur ventrum in Virginia, which institutionalised racial slavery and legitimised the inhumane treatment of Africans.
President Mahama reiterated the importance of the resolution as a tool for truth-telling and justice, calling on the international community to ensure that the legacy of slavery is neither forgotten nor diminished.
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Source:
www.gbcghanaonline.com