President John Dramani Mahama will depart Accra on Monday for New York and Pennsylvania to lead Ghana’s delegation to a United Nations special session on reparatory justice.
There, he will table a landmark resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity.
The trip, announced in a statement signed by Presidential Spokesperson and Minister for Government Communications Felix Kwakye Ofosu on Sunday, will see President Mahama convene and deliver the keynote address at a High-Level Special Event on Reparatory Justice at the United Nations Headquarters on Tuesday.
The event, themed “Reparatory Justice for the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and the Racialised Chattel Enslavement of Africans,” will bring together world leaders and high-level dignitaries to address a matter of historical injustice that has gone unrecognised at the highest levels of global governance for too long.
On Wednesday, President Mahama will address the UN General Assembly during the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. He will present Ghana’s position, adopted by the African Union, on the resolution to formally declare the trafficking of enslaved Africans and the racialised chattel enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity.
The programme begins with a solemn wreath-laying ceremony at the African Burial Grounds Memorial in New York on Tuesday, paying tribute to the memory of enslaved Africans.
President Mahama will also deliver a keynote address at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and engage the Ghanaian community at Temple University as part of the trip.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
