President John Dramani Mahama has expressed disappointment over the United States’ decision to vote against a United Nations resolution recognising the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement as the gravest crime against humanity. President Mahama said he was particularly surprised by Washington’s position because he did not regard the United States as the principal party responsible for initiating and organising the transatlantic slave trade.
Speaking in an interview with TRT World on Friday, August 21, the President said most Africans transported to territories that later became the United States were taken there by European powers during the period when the country was still a colony. “I was disappointed that they did because I don’t hold the US accountable for slavery,” he said. The president acknowledged, however, that slavery persisted in the United States after independence and was eventually abolished following the American Civil War. “Even though after the abolition and after the United States became an independent country, slavery continued until the Civil War was fought and that eventually freed the slaves in the US,” he said.
President Mahama recognised that the United States benefited substantially from the system of slavery, including through the economic activity and infrastructure that developed around enslaved labour. However, he argued that the historical responsibility for the transatlantic slave trade should be viewed in the context of the European powers that organised and facilitated the transportation of Africans to the Americas. “I don’t think that they should bear the guilt, in a certain sense, for it because I would have thought that the European countries that brought the slaves there would feel more adverse to the resolution,” he said.
The President said the voting pattern at the United Nations therefore surprised him, particularly because several European countries with direct historical connections to the slave trade chose to abstain rather than vote against the resolution. “Even they abstained,” he noted. The remarks come months after Ghana played a leading role in securing international support for the resolution at the UN General Assembly on March 25, 2026. A total of 123 countries voted in favour, while the United States, Israel and Argentina voted against it. Fifty-two countries, including Britain and European Union member states, abstained.
The resolution was spearheaded by President Mahama in his capacity as the African Union Champion for advancing justice and the payment of reparations. Although the resolution is not legally binding, it carries political and moral significance and calls for good-faith dialogue on reparatory justice, as well as measures concerning the restitution of cultural property. For Ghana, the vote marked a significant diplomatic achievement in efforts to place reparatory justice for slavery and its continuing consequences firmly on the international agenda. The transatlantic slave trade forcibly removed millions of Africans from the continent between the 15th and 19th centuries, creating systems of forced labour and racialised exploitation whose consequences continue to feature in debates over inequality, economic disadvantage, racism, restitution and historical justice.
President Mahama has repeatedly argued that the reparations campaign should not be reduced to demands for financial compensation or an attempt to reopen historical wounds. Instead, he has framed it as a broader effort aimed at truth, healing, reconciliation, cultural restoration and practical measures to address the enduring effects of slavery. At a high-level consultative conference in Accra in June, he urged African countries and their partners to move beyond symbolic declarations and work towards concrete mechanisms for reparatory justice. The European Union, in explaining its abstention from the UN vote, said it condemned the transatlantic slave trade but raised concerns about aspects of the resolution’s legal formulations. Among the concerns were references to reparations and the application of international law to historical events.
The differing positions at the UN have nevertheless highlighted the continuing sensitivity surrounding questions of historical responsibility, reparations and the legacy of slavery. Ghana’s campaign is expected to remain a major component of its international diplomacy as the government works with African and diaspora partners to translate the UN resolution into practical initiatives. For President Mahama, the next challenge is therefore to convert the international recognition secured at the United Nations into sustained dialogue and tangible action on reparatory justice.
By: Joyce Owusu
