A Big Win for Africa and the Urgent Call to Center It for True Shalom

On March 25, 2026, the United Nations General Assembly made history. In a landmark resolution proposed by Ghana and supported by 123 nations, the transatlantic slave trade; the forced trafficking and racialized chattel enslavement of millions of Africans, was formally declared “the gravest crime against humanity.” Only three countries voted against it: the United States, Israel, and Argentina. Fifty-two abstained, including the United Kingdom and all 27 EU member states. The resolution does not merely condemn a past atrocity; it names its “definitive break in world history, scale, duration, systemic nature, brutality, and enduring consequences” that continue to shape global systems of labor, property, and capital. It calls explicitly for reparatory justice, including formal apologies, restitution, compensation, and the establishment of a global reparations fund.

This is a big win for Africa. For centuries, the continent has borne the unacknowledged weight of this foundational crime. Now, at the highest international forum, the world has listened. The resolution elevates the lived memory of African suffering to the center of global conscience.

Centering Africa Is the Only Path to Shalom

Shalom; that ancient Hebrew word for wholeness, peace, and justice cannot be achieved by sidelining the very wound that fractured humanity. The giant of colonial trauma, rooted in the transatlantic slave trade and the centuries of exploitation that followed, must sit at the heart of every foreign mission, every peace initiative, every justice frontier. If it does not, we have already failed.

Too often, global efforts at “peacebuilding,” “development,” and “human rights” treat Africa’s history as a footnote. Conferences politely acknowledge colonial legacies and then move on. Aid programs are designed without centering African memory. The result? Superficial solutions that never reach the root.

An Astonishing Revelation from the UK Opposition

This systemic resistance was laid bare just days after the vote. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the UK Conservative Party and a woman of Nigerian heritage, publicly stated that Britain should have voted against the resolution. In a post on X, she sharply criticized the Labour government for abstaining rather than opposing the measure:

“Russia, China and Iran vote with others to demand trillions in reparations from UK taxpayers… and the Labour government abstain! Britain led the fight to end slavery. Why didn’t Starmer’s representative vote against this? Ignorance… or cowardice? We shouldn’t be paying for a crime we helped eradicate and still fight today.”

Badenoch’s intervention is astonishing. It reveals the depth of discomfort in parts of the British political establishment with any formal acknowledgment that the transatlantic slave trade and its legacies constitute the gravest crime against humanity. While Britain did eventually lead abolition efforts in the 19th century (after centuries of profiting from the trade), the resolution focuses on the crime itself and its enduring structural consequences, not on who eventually helped end it. Framing reparatory justice as an unfair demand from adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran sidesteps the historical record and reduces a moral reckoning to a contemporary geopolitical threat.

This stance confirms the burden the West still carries and often resists. Nations that built significant wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans, drew arbitrary borders, and practiced selective colonial investment now face an inescapable call to repair. Defensive arguments that emphasize abolition while downplaying the preceding centuries of systemic brutality reveal how difficult it remains for some to place the giant of colonial trauma at the center.

A Colonial Voice That Highlights the Selective Reality

Even within the colonial mindset, this pattern of selective attention was openly acknowledged. In 1904, as recorded in writings that later influenced development thinking, then Under Secretary Winston Churchill observed of Uganda:

“Uganda is alive by itself. It is vital; and in my view, in spite of its insects and diseases, it ought in the course of time to become the most prosperous of all our East and Central African possessions, and perhaps the financial driving wheel of all this part of the world. My counsel plainly is: concentrate upon Uganda. Nowhere else will the results be more brilliant, more substantial, or more rapidly realised.” This strategic Churchill recommendation; concentrate resources on one promising territory while the rest of the region carried the heavier load of extraction and minimal investment, confirms the uneven realities the broader continent still bears. Colonial powers often prioritized high return zones, leaving vast areas with fragmented institutions and enduring disadvantages. The giant of colonial trauma includes this deliberate unevenness.

Why Systemic Forgetting Delays Shalom

Centering Africa is not about hierarchy. It is about addressing the deepest fracture in modern human history, a rupture that reshaped economies, races, borders, and power globally. Ignoring or delaying this reality, including selective colonial investments and contemporary political resistance to repair, means peace initiatives and justice frameworks are built on unstable ground.

The West bears a particular burden as primary architects and beneficiaries. True leadership would move beyond abstentions and defensive rhetoric toward concrete, good faith dialogue on restitution.

Africa’s Internal Mirror

At the same time, Africa cannot use external recognition as a shield against self examination. The UN resolution is a win, but it throws down a gauntlet inward. If we demand the world confront its complicity, we must ask: how much tolerance can we muster for one another?

Can Africa disentangle itself from homophobia that persecutes citizens for who they love? Xenophobia that turns neighbor against neighbor? Nepotism, family rule, corruption, and dictatorship that entrench power over people? These are not minor flaws; they are the antithesis of Shalom.

A continent demanding global justice while tolerating internal oppression undermines its moral authority. True centering of Africa means refusing to romanticize the continent while demanding accountability from its own leaders and citizens.

The world’s push toward Shalom remains credible only to the degree it stops systemically forgetting or delaying the African experience at the core of modern inequality. The 2026 resolution is a step, overwhelming majority support shows growing recognition but abstentions, opposition votes, and Badenoch’s sharp critique prove how far we still are.

Real progress demands:

– Centering the trauma: including its selective colonial manifestations and enduring consequences, in every major global forum as the analytical starting point.

– Concrete repair: from those who profited most, measurable movement on restitution, debt justice, technology transfer, and institutional reform, not endless deflection.

– African leadership: that matches external demands with internal transformation, rejecting the cancers of division, authoritarianism, and intolerance.

Delaying this centering does not preserve peace; it postpones it. Superficial universalism that skips the hardest histories breeds cynicism. Genuine Shalom, integrated peace where no wound is left unaddressed, requires courage from all sides: humility and repair from the West, bold self-accountability from Africa and its diaspora, and honest partnership everywhere else.

The giant of colonial trauma, unevenly distributed yet continent wide in consequence, will not vanish by being ignored or politically resisted. It must be placed at the center of the table. Only then can the delayed work of healing truly begin.

Africa’s historic push at the UN, even in the face of fresh resistance, reminds us: forgetting is not neutrality, it is complicity in the delay. The question now is whether we will finally choose courage over comfort.

Read more about the author here: Philip Kakungulu