World marks horrific slave trade history to guard against more abuses

Recalling the 400-year-old transatlantic slave trade, speakers at the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly emphasized the continuing repercussions.

"The legacy of the transatlantic slave trade haunts us to this day," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres told the assembly on Monday.

"We can draw a straight line from the era of colonial exploitation to the social and economic inequalities of today."

The assembly's ceremony at the U.N.'s headquarters in New York marked the world body's International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, established in 2007 and commemorated on March 25th.

It's not meant to be a look solely into the past; the idea is to preserve and teach an ugly chapter of history that might help ward off humanity’s worst impulses.

“We need to tell the history of slavery from the perspective of those who resisted and fought, and those whose pains were too hard to bear," said writer and activist Djamila Ribeiro, a visiting professor of journalism at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo. "I believe in the healing power of acknowledgement."

The scars of slavery remain visible, Guterres noted, in today's persistent disparities in wealth, income, health, education, and opportunity.

"And we can recognize the racist tropes popularized to rationalize the inhumanity of the slave trade in the white supremacist hate that is resurgent today," he said.

'We must learn and teach'

Lasting more than 400 years, the evil enterprise of enslavement was the "largest legally sanctioned forced migration in human history," Guterres said.

More than 15 million African women, men and children were kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships, and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean, in a tragedy so monstrous we must ensure it never happens again, said Volker Türk, head of the Office the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR.

"The history of slavery is a terrible reminder of inhuman suffering, injustice and loss," he said. "But it is also the story of a victorious struggle against oppression and for freedom – a quest to fulfill our universal human rights.

UNESCO launched a project in 1994 tracing the routes of enslaved peoples that also has served to give a greater voice to the history of slavery and what it means.

The U.N. General Assembly created a U.N. outreach program in 2007 that has been raising awareness of the history and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade.

Guterres urged governments everywhere to introduce lessons into school curricula on the causes, manifestations, and consequences of the transatlantic slave trade, which still casts a "long shadow" over the lives of people of African descent.

"We must learn and teach the horrific history of slavery," he said. "And we must learn and teach the histories of righteous resistance, resilience, and defiance."