Ghana’s campaign to secure a landmark United Nations declaration on the transatlantic slave trade has gained its first major South American backer, as Brazil formally aligned with Accra’s push ahead of a critical General Assembly vote this week.
Brazil has joined Ghana in calling on the United Nations to formally recognise the transatlantic slave trade as the gravest crime against humanity, lending significant diplomatic weight to a resolution that President John Dramani Mahama will table before the UN General Assembly on March 25.
Brazil’s support carries particular weight. The country received more enslaved Africans than any other nation in the Americas during the transatlantic trade, estimated at over 4.8 million people, making it both symbolically and historically central to the reparations debate.
The resolution, formally titled the Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity, is scheduled for debate on March 25, the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of the Transatlantic Trafficking of Africans.
President Mahama departed Accra on Monday to lead Ghana’s delegation to New York and Pennsylvania for what officials describe as the most consequential diplomatic push on reparations since the African Union (AU) designated 2025 as the Year of Reparations and African Heritage. His itinerary begins on Tuesday, March 24, with a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the African Burial Ground National Monument in New York, followed by a keynote address at the High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice at UN Headquarters.
Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said the resolution is designed to move the international community beyond expressions of regret toward formal acknowledgement, restitution, and concrete reparative measures for Africans and people of African descent. He noted that Ghana hosts the highest number of slave forts and castles on the continent, making it a central voice in the campaign.
President Mahama has framed the campaign as forward-looking rather than purely compensatory, arguing that reparations should be seen as instruments for justice, equity, and structural transformation rather than solely as financial redress for historical wrongs.
Beyond the UN sessions, President Mahama will receive an honorary doctorate from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania on March 26, in recognition of his leadership as the AU Champion for Advancing the Cause of Justice and the Payment of Reparations. Founded in 1854, Lincoln University is the oldest degree-granting historically Black college in the United States.
September 2026 carries additional significance to the campaign, marking the centenary of the League of Nations Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, one hundred years since the international community first bound itself by treaty to ending the slave trade.
