Absolutely. I’ve reworked it so the argument develops in full, connected paragraphs rather than short, single-line statements, while preserving the substance, institutional tone, and African-centered perspective. I’ve also improved transitions so the piece reads more like a polished policy/opinion article suitable for publication by the Kabalega Foundation.

Reparations, Historical Justice and the Unfinished African Question: What the UN’s New Position Means

By Kabalega Foundation | 1 September 2026

The question of reparations for the transatlantic slave trade has entered a new and consequential phase. On 31 August 2026, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued new guidance asserting that States Parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have present obligations to address the continuing consequences of historical systems of racial discrimination, including the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and chattel slavery. The development is significant not simply because the word reparations has once again moved to the centre of international debate, but because of the legal reasoning behind the Committee’s position.

Rather than limiting the discussion to whether slavery was prohibited under international law at the time it occurred, the Committee directs attention towards the continuing structural inequalities and racial discrimination that remain visible today, as well as the obligations that States have accepted under contemporary international law. In doing so, it introduces an important shift in the way historical injustice is understood. The question is no longer only, “Who was legally responsible centuries ago?” It is also, and perhaps more importantly, “What responsibilities do States have today when historical systems of exploitation continue to produce measurable inequalities?” For Africa and for people of African descent around the world, this is a question that deserves serious, informed and constructive consideration.

Reparations Are About More Than Money

Public discussion of reparations is often reduced to a single question: how much money should be paid? Financial compensation is certainly an important part of the debate, but it does not capture the full meaning of reparative justice. The UN Committee’s guidance points towards a much broader understanding of what meaningful redress can involve, including financial compensation, restitution, rehabilitation, satisfaction, guarantees of non-repetition and institutional reforms. It also draws attention to measures such as opening historical archives, reconsidering public memorials and establishing truth-seeking mechanisms.

This broader approach matters because historical injustice does not produce only financial losses. Its consequences can include damaged institutions, erased histories, cultural dispossession, unequal access to opportunity and patterns of racial discrimination that persist across generations. If the harm is multidimensional, then a financial payment alone cannot reasonably be expected to repair it in its entirety. Reparations must therefore also involve truth, recognition, restoration and transformation. They require societies to confront uncomfortable histories honestly, recognise those who suffered, preserve the evidence of what occurred, correct distorted narratives and address structures that continue to reproduce inequality.

The Committee’s work on General Recommendation No. 40 has been developing over several years through expert consultations, written submissions and discussions involving States and civil society. Official UN records indicate that the Committee undertook this work to clarify State obligations under the racial discrimination convention in relation to reparations for the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, chattel slavery and continuing harms experienced by people of African descent. This makes the latest position more than a symbolic statement. It forms part of a wider effort to clarify how contemporary international legal obligations can be applied to the continuing consequences of historical racial injustice.

The Scale of the Historical Crime

The transatlantic slave trade was one of the largest systems of forced human displacement in history. The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database estimates that approximately 12.5 million captives were embarked from Africa for the Americas, with about 10.7 million surviving the Middle Passage to disembark in the Americas. These figures are based on reconstructed historical records and estimates rather than a complete census of every person affected, but even these incomplete numbers reveal the extraordinary scale of the system.

Behind every statistic was a human being with a family, a community, a history and a future that was violently interrupted. Families were separated, communities were destabilised, political systems were disrupted and lives were transformed through coercion and violence. The effects extended beyond those who were physically transported across the Atlantic. Warfare, raiding, political competition, economic distortion and demographic disruption affected communities across significant parts of Africa, creating consequences that cannot be understood simply by counting the people who boarded ships.

Nor did those consequences disappear when the transatlantic trade ended. In many parts of Africa, the end of the Atlantic slave trade was followed by colonial domination, racial hierarchies, territorial dispossession and systems that concentrated economic and political power elsewhere. The modern world was consequently shaped not only by the wealth generated through exploitation, but also by the unequal institutions, political relationships and global economic structures that developed around it. That history cannot simply be placed in a museum and declared finished. Its legacies must be examined wherever they continue to influence institutions, opportunity, identity and relations between peoples and States.

The Difficult Question of African Participation

Any serious African conversation about reparations must also confront a difficult part of the history: Africans themselves participated in the capture and sale of other Africans. Historical African kingdoms, political authorities, merchants and intermediaries were involved in different parts of the systems of enslavement that developed along the Atlantic coast. This reality is sometimes invoked to suggest that responsibility for the transatlantic slave trade was equally distributed among Africans and Europeans. Such a conclusion, however, does not follow from the historical evidence.

Historical responsibility should be examined through evidence rather than collective guilt. The transatlantic slave trade developed into a vast international commercial system in which European maritime powers, merchants, investors and colonial economies played major roles in organising, financing, transporting and consuming enslaved labour. African actors also participated in the capture and sale of people, sometimes in the context of warfare and political competition and sometimes in response to economic incentives created by expanding external demand. These realities should be acknowledged honestly rather than concealed.

At the same time, acknowledging African participation should not be used to erase the structure, scale or international political economy of the Atlantic slave system. Nor should present-day Africans be made collectively responsible for the actions of particular historical actors. There is an essential difference between examining the conduct of identifiable historical individuals, political authorities and institutions and assigning guilt to entire populations based on their ancestry. History requires accountability without collective blame. That distinction is essential if the reparations debate is to become constructive rather than accusatory.

The Wider History of Slavery

There is another complexity that deserves acknowledgement. Slavery was not invented by Europeans, nor was the enslavement of Africans confined to the Atlantic world. Various forms of slavery existed in different African societies before European colonial expansion, while systems of enslavement also existed in the Middle East, North Africa, the Indian Ocean world and elsewhere. People from Europe and other regions were also enslaved at different points in history. Recognising these realities does not diminish the particular historical character of the transatlantic slave trade; instead, it reminds us that slavery has a long and complex global history.

Historical analysis must therefore resist simplistic narratives. The case for reparations does not depend on proving that only one civilisation ever practised slavery. It rests on examining particular historical systems, identifying their actors and institutions, understanding the harms they produced and determining the extent to which those harms and related structures of racial inequality continue into the present. This is precisely why the UN Committee’s approach is important. Its argument is not based on creating a universal ranking of historical suffering. Rather, it focuses on the present-day obligations of States under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Legal Question Has Changed

One of the most important aspects of the new UN position is its treatment of what lawyers describe as intertemporality—the principle that historical conduct should generally be assessed according to the legal rules that existed at the time the conduct occurred. Governments resisting historical reparations claims have sometimes relied on the argument that slavery and the slave trade were not prohibited by the international legal standards applicable centuries ago. The Committee’s position does not simply attempt to rewrite the historical legal status of slavery.

Instead, its reasoning places emphasis on the obligations that contemporary States have accepted today, including obligations to address racial discrimination and structural inequalities that persist in the present. That distinction is fundamental. A State does not necessarily have to accept that a historical act was illegal under the law of centuries ago in order to recognise a present responsibility to address discrimination and inequality that remain connected to the legacy of that history.

This is why the Committee’s approach represents an important development in the reparations debate. It places greater emphasis on present obligations and continuing harm rather than attempting to prosecute history itself. The distinction allows the discussion to move beyond an argument over whether modern legal standards can simply be applied retrospectively and towards the more contemporary question of what States must do when the effects of historical racial systems remain embedded in social, economic and institutional realities.

Why Archives and Historical Memory Matter

One of the most compelling dimensions of the UN guidance is its emphasis on archives, memorials and truth-seeking. For Africa, this should resonate deeply because historical power has often included the power to determine which stories are preserved, which voices are heard and which experiences disappear from public memory. The struggle over historical memory is therefore not merely academic. It is closely connected to dignity, identity and the ability of societies to understand themselves on their own terms.

Archives contain more than documents. They provide evidence of how systems operated, who benefited, who suffered and how institutions were constructed. Opening archives can therefore become an act of justice because it allows societies to confront historical realities through evidence rather than inherited assumptions. Likewise, revisiting memorials need not mean erasing history. It can mean ensuring that public memory does not glorify systems of oppression while marginalising the people who suffered under them.

Truth commissions and other historical inquiries can also help societies move beyond inherited myths towards evidence-based understanding. This is particularly important for Africa because the continent’s history has too often been narrated primarily through external perspectives. Recovering African voices, African records and African interpretations is therefore part of a larger process of restoring historical agency. The right to remember is, in this sense, also a right to dignity.

Reparations and the African Development Question

The reparations debate should not be separated from the broader question of African development. Across the continent, societies continue to confront major challenges involving infrastructure, education, health, industrialisation, technological capacity, access to finance, trade and institutional development. Historical injustice alone does not explain every contemporary African challenge. African governments and institutions have their own responsibilities for governance, accountability, policy choices and development outcomes, and those responsibilities cannot simply be transferred to external actors.

At the same time, history cannot reasonably be dismissed as irrelevant. Economic systems develop over time, institutions have histories, wealth accumulates across generations and global trade relationships are inherited. Political boundaries and governance structures have consequences, while access to capital and technology is shaped in part by historical relationships. The question, therefore, is not whether every contemporary inequality can be mechanically attributed to slavery. It is whether the world is prepared to examine how historical systems of exploitation contributed to structures that continue to shape opportunity and, where continuing harm can be established, to consider what forms of remedy are appropriate.

That is a legitimate question for international policy. It is also a question that Africa should approach with intellectual confidence. The purpose should not be to construct a simplistic historical explanation for every present-day problem, but to establish through evidence where historical systems have created continuing disadvantages and to consider how those disadvantages might responsibly be addressed.

What Should Reparations Look Like for Africa?

Africa’s reparations conversation must be broad enough to reflect African priorities. Financial and economic questions are important, but they should not be the beginning and the end of the discussion. Reparative justice could encompass investment in education and research, restoration and protection of cultural heritage, historical documentation, access to archives, scholarships, technology transfer, support for African-led development institutions, cultural restitution, heritage tourism, institutional strengthening and programmes designed with the participation of affected communities.

There is also an important question concerning cultural property. For generations, African cultural objects, manuscripts, artworks and sacred materials have been removed from the continent and placed in foreign museums and private collections. Their restitution, or equitable arrangements concerning their preservation and access, should therefore form part of the wider conversation about historical justice. Cultural heritage is not merely a collection of objects. It carries memory, identity and evidence of civilisation, and its removal can represent a form of cultural dispossession whose consequences continue long after the original act.

Ultimately, reparations should contribute to agency. The objective should not be to create permanent dependency, but to strengthen the capacity of African societies and people of African descent to determine their own futures. That means moving beyond compensation alone towards transformation. The most meaningful reparative programmes would therefore be those that expand knowledge, strengthen institutions, increase productive capacity, protect cultural identity and create opportunities that can endure across generations.

Africa Must Also Look Inward

A credible reparations movement cannot only ask others to account for history. Africa must also confront its own responsibilities. African governments and institutions must strengthen governance, protect citizens’ rights, invest in human capital, combat corruption, protect cultural heritage and create economies capable of generating opportunity for their populations. Historical justice cannot become a substitute for contemporary leadership.

The descendants of enslaved Africans should not be asked to wait indefinitely for justice from foreign governments while their own institutions fail to create dignified opportunities today. Historical justice and contemporary responsibility must therefore operate together. Africa can demand accountability for the injustices of yesterday while accepting responsibility for building the societies of tomorrow. These positions are not contradictory. They are mutually reinforcing, and together they represent a more mature understanding of African agency.

From Victimhood to Agency

Perhaps the most important dimension of the reparations debate is psychological. Africa must not define itself permanently through the wounds inflicted upon it. Remembering slavery does not require Africans to remain psychologically imprisoned by slavery, just as remembering colonialism does not require Africa to remain economically dependent. Historical memory should instead strengthen the determination to build societies capable of exercising sovereignty, creating prosperity and protecting dignity.

This is where the concept of African agency becomes essential. Reparations should not be understood merely as an acknowledgement that Africa suffered. They should also become an opportunity to recognise what Africa can build. A continent with a young population, extraordinary cultural diversity, immense natural resources, growing technological capacity and a powerful global diaspora possesses enormous potential. The challenge is to convert that potential into institutional, economic and political power.

The reparations conversation should therefore ultimately be connected to a larger project of renewal. Justice should strengthen rather than weaken agency. Recognition should encourage rather than replace responsibility. And historical truth should become a foundation upon which a more confident Africa can build its future.

The Relevance of Kabalega’s Legacy

This is where the legacy of Omukama Chwa II Kabalega offers a particularly powerful lens. Kabalega’s resistance was fundamentally a struggle over sovereignty. He resisted the loss of political authority, territory, economic autonomy and the right of his people to determine their own future. His struggle belongs to a broader African history of resistance to external domination and represents the enduring importance of political and cultural self-determination.

For Kabalega Foundation, remembering that legacy cannot simply mean celebrating a historical figure. It must also mean asking what his courage demands of us today. It demands that Africans know their history, that communities protect their cultural heritage and that young people understand the forces that shaped the continent. It also demands that Africa develop the confidence to participate in global affairs not as a passive recipient of decisions, but as a partner capable of defining its interests and contributing to the direction of international affairs.

Most importantly, it demands that historical memory become a source of transformation. The legacy of resistance should not merely remind us of what Africa once defended. It should inspire us to consider what Africa must build, protect and strengthen today.

Beyond the Reparations Debate

The most productive response to the UN’s new position should not be to reduce the debate to whether governments should or should not write cheques. The deeper question is whether the international community is prepared to confront the historical foundations of racial inequality honestly and to design meaningful mechanisms for redress. Doing so requires evidence, dialogue and historical scholarship that is not distorted by political convenience. It also requires African leadership and the meaningful participation of people of African descent themselves.

The discussion must be sufficiently mature to distinguish between historical accountability, present legal obligations and collective blame. It should not become a competition over who suffered most or an attempt to assign inherited guilt to entire populations. Instead, it should become a serious conversation about how societies can repair historical wounds without creating new injustices; how institutions can acknowledge the past without becoming prisoners of it; and how justice can contribute to a more equal and dignified future.

This is ultimately the test of the reparations debate. If it produces only accusation and division, it will have failed to fulfil its transformative potential. If, however, it produces greater historical truth, meaningful restitution, institutional reform, stronger cultural identity and a more equitable international relationship, then it can become part of a much larger project of historical and contemporary justice.

A New Opportunity for African Leadership

The UN Committee’s position presents Africa and the global African diaspora with an important opportunity. African governments, civil society organisations, universities, cultural institutions, historians, legal scholars and communities should engage the reparations conversation with seriousness and intellectual confidence. Africa should not merely wait to see what other countries decide. It should articulate its own understanding of reparative justice and define the priorities that matter most to African societies.

That means asking difficult but necessary questions. What should be restored? What should be documented? What should be returned? What should be invested? Which communities should participate? How can reparations strengthen education, enterprise, culture, technology and institutional capacity? And how can Africa’s global diaspora become a genuine partner in this process rather than simply an audience to decisions made elsewhere?

These questions deserve African-led answers. The reparations debate is therefore not only about looking backwards. It is about deciding what kind of global relationship Africa wants to build going forward. The continent should approach that process neither as a passive victim seeking recognition nor as a society seeking to deny the complexities of its own history, but as an active participant capable of defining what justice, dignity and partnership should mean in the twenty-first century.

Justice Must Ultimately Lead to Transformation

The history of the transatlantic slave trade cannot be undone. The people who were taken cannot be returned to the lives they would have lived, the families that were separated cannot be restored to their original circumstances, and the communities disrupted by generations of exploitation cannot simply be reconstructed as though nothing happened. There are historical losses for which no payment can ever provide complete restoration.

Yet history can be acknowledged. Truth can be recovered, archives can be opened, heritage can be restored, institutions can be reformed, inequalities can be confronted and relationships between Africa and the wider world can be rebuilt on more equitable foundations. These possibilities demonstrate why reparative justice should not be understood simply as a financial transaction. Its deeper purpose is to confront the past in ways that make a more just future possible.

For Kabalega Foundation, the question is therefore not simply, “Who owes Africa?” It is also: What does justice require? What does Africa require? And what must we build for generations yet to come?

The answers will require courage, scholarship, diplomacy, accountability and African agency. The past cannot be changed, but the future can be transformed by what we choose to do with the truth of the past. That may be the most important lesson of this moment: reparations should not be the final destination of historical justice. They should be part of a larger journey—from remembrance to recognition, from recognition to justice, and from justice to transformation.

Kabalega Foundation believes that preserving historical memory, protecting cultural heritage and mobilising the legacies of African resistance can contribute to a more confident, sovereign and transformative Africa. The unfinished African question is therefore not simply how the world should compensate Africa for what was taken. It is also how historical truth, justice and African agency can be brought together to ensure that future generations inherit not merely the memory of what was lost, but the power and confidence to determine what comes next.