President John Dramani Mahama has been presented with the International Statesperson Award by the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a recognition that came one day after he led the African Union and CARICOM to a landmark victory at the United Nations General Assembly.
The award was presented on Friday at a ceremony in Philadelphia, where President Mahama addressed members of the Council on Ghana’s domestic and international agenda.
The World Affairs Council, one of the United States’ foremost foreign policy organisations, presents the award to global leaders it recognises for distinguished service in international affairs.
The timing of the honour was difficult to separate from the events of the day before.
On Thursday, a resolution co-sponsored by Ghana on behalf of the African Union and CARICOM passed at the UN General Assembly with 123 votes, formally placing the transatlantic slave trade on record as a crime against humanity for the first time on that platform.
President Mahama told the audience at the World Affairs Council that the resolution was not the culmination of a sudden push but the product of broad, patient diplomacy.
He said Ghana had been appointed AU champion for reparations, and that his role had been to bring together a coalition of African nations, Caribbean states, South American countries and people of good conscience that had been building toward this moment for years.
“All Ghana did was bring that whole coalition and all that discussion together and bring it to a head to the most reputable platform that is universally acknowledged in the world, which is the UN General Assembly,” he said.
He argued that the resolution now opened pathways for structured dialogue between those who benefited from the transatlantic slave trade and the descendants of its victims, and that it presented an opportunity to examine how the global order had been shaped by that history.
President Mahama’s two days in Philadelphia also included a dialogue with the Ghanaian community in the city and a visit to Lincoln University, the institution where Ghana’s first president, Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, was educated and where President Mahama said the intellectual foundations of Ghana’s liberation were laid.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
