The United Nations has formally declared the transatlantic slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity,” in a measure that backs a sweeping call for reparations for the African diaspora.

According to the Guardian, the resolution was led by Ghana and passed in New York on Wednesday. It’s an active step toward pressuring countries to confront the legacy of slavery, not just with statements of regret but with concrete steps, from apologies to compensation and the return of stolen cultural artifacts.

Of the tally, 123 nations voted in favor, while just three—Argentina, the United States, and Israel—opposed, and more than 50 mostly European states abstained, exposing a sharp divide over how far the world is willing to go on reparations.

“Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery,” said Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama.

Unlike a Security Council decision, the resolution is not legally binding, but it carries significant political and moral weight, setting a new global benchmark for how slavery is named and remembered.

“So many of the intersecting global challenges we now face are rooted in the legacies of enslavement and empire: from geopolitical instability to racism, inequality, underdevelopment and climate breakdown,” a formal petition read. “To truly confront these issues, we must acknowledge where they come from.”

The text condemns the trafficking of Africans and racialized chattel slavery as a defining rupture in world history, citing its scale, brutality, and the way its consequences still shape everything from policing to wealth gaps today.

It calls for “reparatory justice,” including formal apologies, restitution, financial compensation, rehabilitation, and reforms to tackle systemic racism, as well as free returns of looted art and archives to African and Caribbean countries.

In a statement before the vote, Deputy U.S. Ambassador Dan Negrea said, the U.S. “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred,” according to the Associated Press.

Negrea went on to say, “The United States also strongly objects to the resolution’s attempt to rank crimes against humanity in any type of hierarchy,” he said. “The assertion that some crimes against humanity are less severe than others objectively diminishes the suffering of countless victims and survivors of other atrocities throughout history.”

In 2020, reparations discussions gained support in the United States due to the murder of George Floyd and escalating calls for action. However, that glimmer of support has since diminished more recently after broader conservative backlash, as the AP shares.

​“The main point is not to introduce a hierarchy of crimes,” said Kyeretwie Osei, of the African Union, to The Guardian. “It is rather an attempt to properly situate that particular chapter in history…how it was so world-breaking in its impact that it essentially created the platform for every atrocity and crime against humanity that then followed.”