UN Resolution Declares Slave Trade as 'Gravest Crime', Faces Western Abstention
On March 25, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution led by Ghana, declaring the trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of Africans as 'the gravest crime against humanity'. The resolution, which passed with 123 votes in favor, three against, and 52 abstentions, calls for formal apologies, reparatory justice, and the return of looted cultural property. The United States, Israel, and Argentina voted against the resolution, while the United Kingdom and all EU member states abstained. The resolution aims to establish a crime whose scale, brutality, and enduring consequences continue to affect the present. The backlash from Western countries, particularly the UK, centered around concerns of creating a 'hierarchy of historical atrocities' and the legal status of the slave trade at the time. 
