August 31, 2026
GENEVA – The harms of the trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery continue today through systemic racial discrimination and structural inequalities, giving rise to State obligations to provide reparatory justice, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said in a new General Recommendation.
“Anti-Black racism, created to sustain chattel slavery, has endured long after abolition,” the Committee said, highlighting that their legacies continue to shape contemporary laws, policies and institutions.
The Committee also pointed to racialised violence, stereotyping and structural barriers that continue to constrain educational attainment, economic mobility, health outcomes and environmental safety, producing enduring intergenerational disparities. It said that “the intergenerational psychosocial, health and economic harms rooted in enslavement have been reinforced by policies perpetuating anti-Black racism.”
“The elimination of racial discrimination cannot be effective, thorough or lasting without a full commitment to examining and redressing the harms and continuing consequences of the trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery,” the Committee stated.
The Committee also traced today’s unjustly accumulated wealth across societies and borders to “centuries of stolen labour” that generated “vast wealth that compounded over generations, producing extreme material inequality between those who benefited from chattel slavery and those who were harmed by it.”
Addressing the legal question of historical acts that predate the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the Committee explained that “the passage of time should not be understood as preventing States from recognising these historical injustices or adopting appropriate measures of reparatory justice and accountability for those crimes.” It went on to stress that, irrespective of the legal characterisation of the original historical acts, States remain bound by their present obligations under ICERD to eliminate contemporary racial discrimination and address structural inequalities and other continuing consequences linked to colonialism, the trafficking in enslaved Africans and racialised chattel slavery.
The Committee further stated that denying effective reparatory justice is itself “a distinct form of racial discrimination”, violating article 2 of ICERD.
Through issuing General Recommendations, the Committee provides guidance to States Parties on how to interpret and implement the Convention. In this new General Recommendation 40, “on reparatory justice for the harms and continuing consequences of colonialism, the trafficking in enslaved Africans across the Atlantic and other routes, and racialised chattel slavery”, the Committee recommended reparatory measures to be comprehensive and wide-ranging, combining monetary and non-monetary measures, including structural measures, and encompassing restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition.
The Committee also called on States to repeal or revise domestic laws and policies that perpetuate racism, racial hierarchies or discrimination, or that hinder reparatory justice, calling for transformative changes to laws, policies and institutions that continue to perpetuate racial inequality.
In particular, the Committee called on States to ensure the full and effective participation of people of African descent and affected communities in policymaking and in the design and implementation of reparatory justice measures.
The Committee also explicitly addressed the responsibility of private and other non-State actors, including religious organisations, universities, businesses, banks, insurers and other financial institutions that participated in, facilitated or profited from trafficking in enslaved Africans, racialised chattel slavery or related colonial practices. It called on States to ensure that such actors effectively contribute to reparatory justice, including by acknowledging their historical roles, opening relevant archives and contributing to reparatory measures “in a manner commensurate with their involvement and the benefits they obtained”.
Acknowledgements and apologies, the Committee said, “should be accompanied by concrete measures and should not substitute for other appropriate forms of reparation.”
Education and memorialisation are also central to combatting discriminatory attitudes and preventing recurrence. States should ensure accurate teaching of these historical injustices and their contemporary legacies, combat misinformation and ideologies of racial superiority, and use memorialisation and public spaces to recognise both the atrocities committed and the contributions of people of African descent.
To make reparations effective, the Committee recommended time-bound national action plans, developed in consultation with people of African descent and reparation committees. Reparations must be aimed at “dismantling the race-based hierarchical domination and subjugation within and across all institutions.”
The full document of General Recommendation 40 is available online.