The United Nations has recommended that Britain erect statues and create artworks honoring people of African descent as a means of atoning for the transatlantic slave trade. The guidance, published by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), asserts that former slave-trading nations have an "obligation to repair" the harm caused by the slave trade.
CERD, composed of 18 independent human rights experts, suggests that public spaces should acknowledge the contributions of people of African descent and "clearly acknowledge the wrongs of those who supported or benefited from historical atrocities." The committee stated that "satisfaction to people of African descent can include the right to investigation and truth, public judgments and acknowledgements, apologies, acceptances of responsibility and public commemorations, including memorials and dedications of public spaces."
These recommendations come six months after UN member states endorsed demands for reparations. Legal experts are urging former slave-trading nations to implement such measures as part of "reparatory justice."
The guidance also calls for educational reforms, stating that schools and curricula should provide unbiased accounts of slavery, its consequences, and the experiences of people of African descent in modern times. Furthermore, it urges countries to "act early to prevent prejudice and address misinformation about transatlantic chattel slavery and its ongoing harms to people of African descent."
The report emerges ahead of King Charles III's planned autumn tour of the Caribbean, a region where the Royal Family's historical connections to the slave trade are under increasing scrutiny. Researchers are examining the extent of the British Royal Family's involvement with, support for, or benefit from the transatlantic slave trade, particularly through the Royal African Company, which the family patronized.
In March, African and Caribbean states reiterated demands for trillions of pounds in reparations from Britain and other former colonial powers. The president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, addressed the UN in New York, criticizing the "deafening silence" from European states that profited from the forced labor of millions of Africans over four centuries. He presented a resolution, supported by the African Union and Caribbean states, seeking formal recognition of the transatlantic slave trade as a "grave crime against humanity."
In 2023, a UN judge suggested that the UK could owe more than £18 trillion in reparations. The CERD guidance's authors include US lawyer Gay McDougall and Liberian legal expert Pela Boker-Wilson, who emphasize that compensation should encompass societal change beyond financial restitution. They referenced the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, during which demonstrators targeted monuments associated with slavery and colonialism, such as the toppling of a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.