The authors identify the transatlantic slave trade as a vast network of crimes against African humanity, noting that colonialism, apartheid, and neocolonialist institutions perpetuate—and, in many cases, continue to profit from—those historical harms. The extractive and exploitative institutions built during the transatlantic slave trade continue to hold Africans and people of African descent back from attaining their full human rights, including the freedom to self-determination. To redress these present and historical wrongs, the authors call for a sustained international assessment of historical and ongoing abuses, to result in reparations along with major transformations of currently hegemonic institutions. Meanwhile, they call upon Global Africans to work toward development based in inclusive, equitable economies. Pressing the United Nations and various social movements to demand accountability from European governments, financial institutions, multinationals and other global centers of power, the coalition hopes to move the world in a new direction, toward justice-based social systems that hold human rights as central and inviolable.

In reading the declaration, I was struck by its communal and constructive focus. Whereas US-based calls for reparations, from what I have followed, seem often to reflect the individualist and money-based values of the West (i.e., reparations are generally conceived in terms of financial payments to individuals or families), this coalition is calling for nothing less than a new vision of society shaped by “values of African humanism.” If utopian, this broadly inclusive vision—which aspires to the protection of all peoples from injustice—is inspiring and, I think, much needed in our world.