Letter of the Day | Why the UN vote on slavery matters for justice

THE EDITOR, Madam:

History has spoken again – and this time, the world has listened.

The recent decision by the United Nations to classify the transatlantic slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” is is a long-overdue moral clarification – one that confronts centuries of evasion, euphemism, and historical minimisation.

For too long, the language of ‘trade’ has softened the brutality of what was, in truth, the industrial-scale commodification of human life. Millions of people from African were not just participants in commerce; they were its currency. Families were shattered, identities erased, and entire civilizations disrupted in a system that converted persons into property and suffering into profit.

The leadership of John Mahama, president of Ghana, alongside the unified advocacy of the African Union and Caribbean Community, signals something profound: the descendants of the enslaved are no longer asking for recognition – they are asserting it.

Predictably, some nations resisted. The argument that we must not “create a hierarchy of atrocities” may sound reasonable, but it risks obscuring a crucial truth: not all historical crimes function in the same way. The transatlantic slave system was not only catastrophic in scale; it was structural in consequence. It helped to shape the modern world – its economies, its racial hierarchies, and its enduring inequalities.

To name this history clearly is not to diminish other sufferings. It is to understand this one rightly.

In Jamaica and across the Caribbean, we live daily with the aftershocks of that system – in patterns of land ownership, economic vulnerability, social stratification, and even cultural memory. Reparatory justice is not a backward-looking obsession but a a forward-looking necessity.

From a theological standpoint, this moment also carries weight. Scripture reminds us that truth precedes reconciliation: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). Naming the sin is part of the healing.

The UN resolution may not be legally binding, but it is morally binding. Perhaps that is where transformation begins – not in law alone, but in conscience.

DUDLEY MCLEAN II

dm15094@gmail.com