On March 25, 2026, the International Day of "Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade," the United Nations voted to adopt Resolution A/80/L.48 entitled "United Nations Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity (UNDOTEA)." As extensive reporting has described, the resolution was sponsored by a group of fifty-four African nations and was passed by a vote of 123 to 3 with 52 abstentions (and a few nations not voting at all). The three nations voting to reject the resolution outright were the United States, Argentina, and Israel. Most European nations abstained. As articulated by the Department of Global Health Justice at UW, this essentially amounts to a rejection of the resolution by the Global North. The resolution was non-binding, called for apology, return of stolen property, and the consideration of reparations. Justifications for rejection of the resolution relied largely on the contention that the hierarchy of wrongs implied by the document was inappropriate and exaggerated, that the actions taken in the past that the resolution addressed were legal at the time, and that it was inappropriate to apply the standards of today to previous eras. It does not appear accidental that the colonizing nations that most benefitted financially from the Transatlantic slave trade did not support the measure. For more information and links to relevant sources see the U.N. Media page, the statement from African Union, and Wikipedia.
Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
Reparations Commission Research Historian
Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey
