Accra Conference: Growing Demands for Reparations

Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed

At a reparations summit in Ghana, delegates agreed Thursday to establish a Global Reparations Fund to seek compensation owed to millions of Africans enslaved centuries ago during the transatlantic slave trade.
The Accra conference on reparations adds to growing demands for reparations after an estimated 12 million Africans were forcibly removed by European nations between the 16th and 19th centuries and enslaved on plantations that made it possible to create wealth at the cost of poverty.
Centuries after the end of the slave trade, people of African descent worldwide continue to face systemic racial discrimination and racist attacks, a recent report from a special United Nations forum concludes which supports reparations as a “cornerstone of justice in the 21st century”.
“It is time that Africa, whose sons and daughters had their freedoms controlled and were sold into slavery, also received reparations,” Ghana’s President, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo, told the conference attended by senior government officials from across Africa as well as the diaspora community.