By Prince Ahenkorah
President John Dramani Mahama departed Accra on 23 March at the head of a high-level delegation for New York, where he will press the African Union’s campaign to have the transatlantic slave trade formally recognised by the United Nations as a crime against humanity.
The visit, which also includes a stop in Pennsylvania, is being framed by Accra as a bid to cement Ghana’s leadership in the global reparatory justice movement while consolidating support from the Caribbean.
At the UN, Mahama is scheduled to deliver the keynote address at a high-level special event on 24 March under the theme “Reparatory Justice for the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans”.
The following day he will address the General Assembly for the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The formal objective is to advance a resolution, adopted by the African Union, that seeks to declare the slave trade “the gravest crime against humanity”. The initiative has drawn explicit backing from Caribbean states, with Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Michael Drew who visited Accra earlier this month pledging to rally the full Caribbean Community (CARICOM) behind the move. Drew, who holds the CARICOM chair, told a Jubilee House meeting on 4 March that he had already begun consultations to bring the regional bloc on board.
Mahama’s delegation includes government officials and presidential spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu, who described the UN gathering as “a critical opportunity for the global community to confront and address one of the gravest injustices in human history”.
The trip also features a wreath-laying ceremony at the African Burial Grounds Memorial in New York and a visit to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where the president will address the Ghanaian community and engage with diaspora audiences.
For Accra, the high-profile push on reparatory justice serves both diplomatic and domestic purposes. It positions Mahama as a continental spokesman on an issue that resonates strongly with Ghana’s Pan-Africanist heritage, while reinforcing ties with the Caribbean a region whose political weight within CARICOM and the African diaspora could prove valuable in sustaining momentum at the UN.