Britain should erect more statues honouring people of African descent as a way of atoning for the slave trade, the United Nations has said.
Legal experts are calling on former slave-trading nations to carry out the act, alongside other deeds of ‘reparatory justice’ because they have an ‘obligation to repair’ the harm caused by the slave trade.
The recommendations feature in new guidance published by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and come six months after UN member states backed demands for reparations.
CERD consists of 18 independent human rights experts who have been elected to serve four-year terms.
The proposals include the creation of artworks and statues in public spaces that pay tribute to the contributions of people of African descent.
‘Public spaces should honour the contributions of people of African descent and clearly acknowledge the wrongs of those who supported or benefited from historical atrocities,’ the guidance states.
‘Satisfaction to people of African descent can include the right to investigation and truth, public judgments and acknowledgements, apologies, acceptances of responsibility and public commemorations, including memorials and dedications of public spaces.’
By contrast, the authors referred to the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 during which demonstrators targeted monuments linked to slavery and colonialism.
Britain should erect more statues honouring people of African descent as a way of atoning for the slave trade, the United Nations has said. Pictured: An 18th century illustration of slavery
In Bristol in 2020, protesters tore down a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it in the harbour
In Bristol, protesters tore down a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and dumped it in the harbour following the death of George Floyd in America.
Footage showed demonstrators heaving the metal monument down with ropes before cheering and dancing around it, with many placing their knees on the fallen statue as it lay on the ground.
The statue had been in place since 1895 before it was toppled.
Along with the tobacco trade, Mr Colston’s wealth helped develop Bristol in the 17th Century. He used much of his riches, accrued from his extensive slave trading, to build schools and almshouses in his home city.
The guidance, which was largely devised by the CERD panellists, US lawyer Gay McDougall and Liberian legal expert Pela Boker-Wilson, says compensation should not only be financial but also bring about change to society.
On hate speech and xenophobia, Britain and other countries ‘must act early to prevent prejudice and address misinformation about transatlantic chattel slavery and its ongoing harms to people of African descent’.
Schools and curriculums meanwhile should provide unbiased accounts of slavery, its consequences and the experience of people of African descent in modern times.
The report has come just ahead of the King’s planned autumn tour of the Caribbean, where the Royal Family’s links to the slave trade could come under scrutiny.
Researchers are looking into the extent to which the British Royal Family was involved in, supported or benefited from the transatlantic slave trade, through the Royal African Company that it patronised.
In March, Britain and other former colonial powers faced a fresh demand from African and Caribbean states to make trillions of pounds in reparations.
The president of Ghana used a speech at the United Nations in New York to attack the ‘deafening silence’ from European states ‘enriched’ by the abduction and forced labour of more than 12million Africans over four centuries.
John Dramani Mahama lashed out before he presented a new resolution, backed by the African Union and Caribbean states, seeking formal recognition of the transatlantic slave trade as a ‘grave crime against humanity’.
He was loudly applauded when he said: ‘People sometimes try to put a disclaimer on slavery by insisting that you cannot use the social norms of today to judge the actions and events that took place in the past. Well such people are loud and wrong.
‘Just because everyone is doing something doesn’t make it right. Slavery is wrong now, it was wrong then.’
In 2023, a UN judge said the UK could owe more than £18trillion in reparations.
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