From June 17 to June 19, 2026, the Government of Ghana convened the High-Level Consultative Conference on Reparatory (external link)Justice in Accra. The conference brought together representatives from over 80 states, alongside intergovernmental organizations, legal experts, scholars, and civil society actors from Africa, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Europe. This gathering marks the first operational step to actualize United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution A/RES/80/250 on the trafficking of enslaved Africans (external link).
African Futures Lab participated directly in this historic convening with our Executive Director, Liliane Umubyeyi, PhD (external link), contributing her expertise to the final drafting of the Global Strategic Framework for Reparatory Justice, working alongside our partners and co-organizers Reform Initiatives (external link) and the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) (external link).
The conference culminated on June 19, 2026, with the adoption of the Accra Next Steps Commitments on Reparatory Justice. This framework establishes a unified transcontinental agenda, providing political, legal, and institutional structure to long-standing demands for recognition, repair, restitution, and systemic accountability regarding the trafficking and enslavement of Africans, colonialism, apartheid, genocide, and their contemporary consequences. To operationalize these goals, the commitments establish three international bodies:
- A High-Level Global Advisory Council on Reparatory Justice to guide international diplomatic coordination.
- A Global Expert Panel on the Restitution of Cultural Heritage to facilitate the return of stolen cultural property, manuscripts, archives, and human remains.
- A Global Legal Panel on Reparatory Justice to strengthen the legal architecture for international reparations claims.
While the adoption of these structural mechanisms marks a significant institutional milestone, the diplomatic dynamics inside the conference rooms revealed a deeper geopolitical tension. Reflecting on these interactions in a (external link)Guardian (external link) op-ed (external link)published shortly after the conference, our Executive Director Liliane Umubyeyi, PhD, analyzed how the sustained momentum built across regions like Nairobi, Bridgetown, and Addis Ababa effectively ended the historical absence of major former European colonial powers, forcing countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark to engage on the global stage.
However, this increased presence also exposed a profound gap between European concessions and systemic justice. While France proposed a joint historical commission with Ghana and other nations focused on heritage restitution, the analysis highlights that these measures stop at symbolic remembrance and memorialization. The Global Strategic Framework is a blueprint to redesign an unequal international order, directly linking historical colonialism to modern financial, economic, and climate inequalities. True accountability requires European states to move past superficial gestures and address the structural frameworks that continue to reproduce global disparities.
As attention turns toward the UN General Assembly this September, the Accra Commitments serve as the framework to hold former colonial powers accountable to a just international order. We remain dedicated to providing the research, policy analysis, and legal advocacy required to translate these transcontinental commitments into material outcomes.