Newsletter 03/26 - African Union working for reparations

In the 2025 Annual Report of the Activities of the African Union and its Organs the dedicated section highlights that the Theme of the Year 2025 transitions into the “2026-2035 Decade of Justice for Africans and People of African Descent through Reparations”, that at the institutional architecture level the work will be coordinated by the Citizens and Diaspora Directorate - CIDO (which chaired from 15 to 19 December 2025 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and from 9 to 10 February 2026 in Accra, Ghana, the constitutive meetings of the African Union Committee of Experts on Reparations - AUCER and the African Union Reference Group of Legal Experts – AULER) and that the Commission has initiated the process to designate reparations as one of the flagship issues of the Union and encourages the Member States to host an annual Conference on reparations.

On February 14 and 15, 2026 during the thirty-ninth summit, building on Decision 934 (XXXVIII) on qualification of slavery, deportation and colonisation as crimes against humanity and genocide against the peoples of Africa of the previous year, the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union decided that on March 25, 2026 (International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade) the President of Ghana John Dramani Mahama, African Union Champion for Reparations, will table before the United Nations General Assembly the draft resolution Declaration of the Trafficking in Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity, relying on the support of the Caribbean Community.

Colonialism Reparation welcomes that the African Union is working to calls for justice for Africans and people of African descent through reparations by extending the focus on reparations to a decade and calls on other intergovernmental organizations to follow the example of the Caribbean Community and the African Union.