Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,Distinguished Delegates,Ladies and Gentlemen.Truth begins with language, with the power that words hold to shape consciousness, to shift perspective, to propel action.

I therefore offer this truth as a starting point: There is no such thing as a slave.There were human beings who were trafficked and then enslaved by people who believed they could own those human beings as chattel, as their personal property.

Some will hear this and think that I am splitting hairs.

“Isn’t that the same thing?” they might ask.

It’s not at all the same thing.

Not if you acknowledge an individual’s humanity.

Not if you respect an individual’s basic right to dignity.

The entire transatlantic slave trade was designed to deny African people their humanity.

And that denial was premised on a racial hierarchy with no basis in fact or science, a racial hierarchy that deemed whiteness superior and blackness inferior.

The atrocities that were committed against enslaved Africans, the myriads of injustices that were borne of slavery and carried forward into successive social frameworks, took place specifically because they were considered objects.

So, when discussing slavery and its resulting institutions and practices, we must always start by reclaiming racial equality, the dignity of Africans, the humanity of our ancestors who were enslaved and, as a matter of course, our own humanity.

Recently, someone asked me to explain the importance of the resolution on the declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.

I responded without pause or hesitation, and I’d like to share with you what I told him.

This resolution allows us, as a global community, to collectively bear witness to the plight of the 18 million men, women, and children whose homes, communities, names, families, hopes, dreams, futures, and lives were stolen from them over the course of four centuries.

I speak these words today not only for Ghana, but also in solidarity with the rest of Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, the wider Diaspora and, indeed, all people of good conscience throughout the world.

This resolution is a pathway to healing and reparative justice.

This resolution is a safeguard against forgetting.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, violence begins with language; when words are used as weapons, or to codify abuse; when people are called out of their names.

Regardless of their state of dress when they were captured, enslaved Africans were always stripped of their clothing while being kept in the dungeons of the fortresses that had been built by the Europeans.

They were forced, with their limbs chained and shackled, onto the cargo hold of a ship.

They remained naked, packed like sardines, during the months-long journey through the Middle Passage.

Not all those who were loaded onto the ships survived the voyage.

A number of the ships sank, and many of the enslaved jumped overboard, choosing certain death to captivity.

10 to 15% of enslaved people died in the Middle Passage.

Whenever a ship did arrive at its destination, the enslaved people, still naked, were taken to the market, where they were inspected and appraised, like livestock.

They were then placed on an auction block in front of an audience of potential buyers and sold to the highest bidder.

Once they were on the plantation where they would work and live, they were stripped of their names.

No longer Fatou, Bubakar, Kofi, Nana Yaw, Emeka, Nahnyong or Hamisu, they were given names like Ben, Jemima, Toby, or Mary.

In addition to their new name, they were also called “girl,” or “boy,” regardless of how old they were; and there was also—or maybe I should say always— that filthy N-word.

If a surname was ever needed, it would be that of their master.

Sometimes they were even branded, like cattle, with the plantation’s insignia or logo.

There were sugar plantations, but there were also coffee, cotton, tobacco, and cocoa plantations in the Caribbean and the Americas.

South America had diamond and gold mines as well.

The production of indigo also took place in Jamaica.

The people who were enslaved laboured on those plantations from sunrise to sunset.

The conditions under which they worked were brutal.

They were beaten, occasionally to the point of death.

They were underfed, kept in cramped quarters, and they often died young, if not from the labour then from diseases.

Though some enslaved women were turned into breeders, in many of these places, the deaths far outnumbered the births.

Let’s not mince words, ladies and gentlemen.

Business was booming because when labour is virtually free, profit margins are huge.

African lives were disposable.

If too many of the enslaved died, more were captured from their homes on the continent, enslaved and trafficked.

During conversations about slavery, this is the point at which euphemisms are introduced, and there’s a rush to talk about abolition.

But we can’t afford to look away; this is precisely the part when we should pay close attention because the devil is in the details.

I’m going to share four trafficking destinations with you.

Remember when you hear these numbers that this is not data; these are human beings.

Roughly six million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Brazil, which is the fifth largest nation in the world, stretching 4,400 kilometres from north to south and 4,320 kilometres from east to west.

Almost 2 million enslaved Africans were trafficked to Jamaica, which was the most profitable of all the sugar-producing locations.

The island is 235 kilometres long and between 34 and 84 kilometres wide, depending on where you’re located.

About 500,000 enslaved Africans were trafficked to America.

From the early 17th century, when the first ship arrived, to the mid-19th century, when chattel slavery was abolished, America grew from 3 colonies to an independent nation with 36 states.

Over 450,000 enslaved Africans were trafficked to Barbados, an island that is 34 kilometres long and 23 kilometres wide.

Before the trafficking of enslaved Africans, plantation labour in Barbados came from white indentured servants, who were usually Irish.

There were two major problems with indentured servants: one was that they eventually had to be granted their freedom, and the other was that if they ran away, catching them proved challenging because they were white and could easily blend in.

In 1661, Barbados enacted a code for the enslaved.

In the preamble, negroes are described as “a heathenish, brutish and uncertain, dangerous kind of people.” It goes on to explain that this is why there must be a set of laws detailing how they should be punished.

Clause Two of the law details what to do if “any negro man or woman shall offer any violence to any Christian as by striking or the like.” It goes on to say that if it is a first offence, the negro should be severely whipped by the Constable.

However, if it’s the negro’s second offence, “he shall be severely whipped, his nose slit and be burned in the face.” This code gave owners and overseers the ability to torture, maim and even kill enslaved Africans with....