Ghana, which has led a campaign for reparations for the nearly four-century-long trans-Atlantic slave trade, said on Wednesday that support \u200bis growing among Western countries for the effort.<\/p>\n
The campaign’s first focus is \u200con restitution of looted artifacts, Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told an event on reparatory justice co-hosted by Ghana, Germany and France on the sidelines of the United Nations (UN) General \u200bAssembly on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Later stages could include formal apologies, debt relief and \u200bfinancial compensation under a 19-point plan adopted by the African Union \u2060(AU) and the Caribbean Community Commission on Reparatory Justice at a conference in Ghana \u200bin June.<\/p>\n
The UN passed a resolution in March recognising trans-Atlantic slavery as “the gravest \u200bcrime against humanity” with 123 votes in favor and three from the US, Israel and Argentina against. Fifty-two other countries, including European Union members and the United Kingdom, abstained.<\/p>\n
Since then, many European \u200bcountries have expressed their support, he said. “Virtually all the European countries that abstained \u200bduring the vote have reached out and have said they are going to work with \u200cus \u2060on this journey,” Ablakwa said.<\/p>\n
The UK and Portugal have offered support, and the US has also said it is willing to work with the Ghana-led effort, Ablakwa said.<\/p>\n
France, Germany and the Netherlands have pledged their willingness to return artifacts, he \u200badded.
\n“Restitution is very important \u200bto this journey. These \u2060artifacts ought to be returned to the motherland,” the minister said.<\/p>\n
About 12.5 million Africans were enslaved and transported across the \u200bAtlantic between the 16th and 19th centuries, according to the \u200bTrans-Atlantic Slave \u2060Trade Database. They were taken to South America, the Caribbean and North America to labor on plantations and in mines. This generated vast wealth that fueled development \u2060of Western \u200bpowers while causing enduring economic and social \u200bharm.<\/p>\n
Portugal and Britain were responsible for transporting more than 70% of all enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, \u200baccording to the database.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":29857,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"news-type":[78,26],"class_list":["post-46364","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"The UK and Portugal have offered support, and the US has also said it is willing to work with the Ghana-led effort, Ablakwa said.","published_date":"","news_description":"The UK and Portugal have offered support, and the US has also said it is willing to work with the Ghana-led effort, Ablakwa said.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46365,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/46364\/revisions\/46365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=46364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}