The United Kingdom has voted against a resolution from the United Nations Human Rights Council to pay reparations from the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
On Friday, a resolution titled “From rhetoric to reality: a global call for concrete action against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,” was tabled before a 47-strong U.N. Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.
Durban Declaration
The resolution reiterates the Durban Declaration’s claim (pdf) that the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism were grave violations of international law and that states must make reparations proportionate to the harms committed.French said that the UK remains “resolute in our commitment to combating all forms of racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia and related intolerance whether that be at home or abroad.”
“Nonetheless, we have a number of concerns with this text. We do not agree with the multiple references to the Durban Conference, given the historic concerns over antisemitism,” she added.
“We do not agree with claims made in this resolution that states are required to make reparations for the slave trade and colonialism, which caused great suffering to many but were not, at that time, violations of international law,” said French.
“Moreover, these claims divert focus from the pressing challenges of tackling contemporary racism and global inequality – which are global challenges affecting all regions,” she added.
Modern Slavery
Historian and author Zareer Masani has long argued that paying reparations for historic crimes is both impractical and unethical and criticised the countries that voted for the reparations resolution.“The numbers [of] the majorities are made up by post-colonial countries where regimes actually thrive on blaming colonialism for their own failings and shortcomings. I think that is the tendency within the U.N.,” Masani told The Epoch Times.
“It’s quite right that countries like the UK and the U.S. resist that,” he said.
On the call for reparations, Masani said that it’s difficult to prove who has a claim from such a long time ago. Furthermore, it would be costly to taxpayers and it would even be paid by British people who are themselves are descendants of slaves.
“What [the reparations] don’t cover, and should cover, is the fact that there was and still is global slavery, and no one is going to get reparations for that,” he said.
“There were slave trades all around the world, some of which the British stamped out. And there is modern slavery where more than 10 million people are enslaved in Africa every day, and even more in China, and no one is actually claiming reparations for those people,” said Masani.
Set up in 2006 to replace the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. Human Rights Council meets three times a year, but has faced widespread criticism for letting countries with poor human rights like China become members.
Leaders from the United States, UK, and Canada called for a debate on the Chinese Communist Party’s suppression of the Uyghurs and other minorities in Xinjiang after a U.N. report documented possible crimes against humanity in the region.
