Article #281771

The UK and EU countries who abstained when Ghana’s UN resolution was adopted may soon find it harder to sustain the same old script on reparations

The most revealing thing about Ghana’s UN resolution was not that it passed. It was who could not bring themselves to stand with it.

On 25 March, the UN general assembly adopted the Ghana-led resolution by 123 votes to three, with 52 abstentions. It declared that the trafficking and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans was “the gravest crime against humanity” and urged steps including formal apologies, reparatory justice and the return of looted cultural property. The three states that voted no were the US, Israel and Argentina; the UK and all EU member states abstained.