On Monday, UN Secretary-General Anthony Guterres addressed an event in New York to mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, which is observed globally on March 25. Mr. Guterres urged Africans to fight against the legacy of racism inherited from slavery through education, acknowledging that the history of slavery was one of suffering and barbarism that exposed humanity to its worst.
The event honors the lives of those who died as a result of slavery or experienced the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade. It is also an opportunity to raise awareness about the dangers of racism and prejudice. According to Mr. Guterres, honoring the millions of Africans sold into slavery helps to restore dignity to people.
He noted that the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade “haunts us to this day,” with a straight line linking the era of colonial exploitation to the current social and economic inequalities. The scars of slavery, he said, were still visible in persistent disparities in wealth, income, health, education, and opportunity. Mr. Guterres further noted that the racist tropes popularised to justify the inhumanity of the slave trade still exist in white supremacist hate that is resurgent today.
Education, he said, is the most potent weapon in fighting slavery’s legacy of racism. Governments worldwide must introduce lessons into school curricula on the causes, manifestations, and far-reaching consequences of the transatlantic slave trade. The UN chief added that the United Nations Remember Slavery Programme and UNESCO’s Slave Route Project could help member states teach slavery in schools.
Mr. Guterres urged the teaching of the history of Africa and the African diaspora, highlighting their significant contributions to societies wherever they went and their exceptional accomplishments in every field of human endeavor. He also stressed the need to learn and teach the histories of righteous resistance, resilience, and defiance.
The evil enterprise of enslavement lasted over 400 years and was the largest legally sanctioned forced migration in human history, according to the UN chief. Millions of African children, women, and men were kidnapped and trafficked across the Atlantic, torn from their families and homelands. Their communities were shattered, their bodies commodified, and their humanity denied. The history of racialized chattel slavery, Mr. Guterres noted, was a history of suffering, crime, violence, exploitation, colossal injustice, cruelty, and barbarism. However, it was also a history of awe-inspiring courage that showed human beings at their best, starting with enslaved people who rose against impossible odds and extending to abolitionists who spoke out against the atrocious crime.
UN asks Nigerians, other Africans to fight slavery legacy through education
