“The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the 'gravest crime against humanity' and called for reparations as 'a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs'.”

“The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom).”

“Voting in favour were 123 states, while Argentina, Israel and the US voted against. There were 52 abstentions, including the UK and members of the EU.”

“The UK said it recognised the gravity of the issues addressed in the resolution and the untold harm and misery the transatlantic slave trade had inflicted on millions of people over many decades.”

“James Kariuki, the UK chargé d’affaires to the UN, said Britain continued to disagree with fundamental propositions of the text and was 'firmly of the view that we must not create a hierarchy of historical atrocities'.”

“The British MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy presented a petition to the House of Commons, pushing for a state apology by the UK for its key role in slavery and colonialism of Africans.”

“For four centuries, seven European nations including the UK enslaved and trafficked more than 15 million Africans across the Atlantic.”

“The scale of the chattel slavery was such that 18th and 19th-century abolitionists coined the term 'crime against humanity' to describe it.”

“Historians have also linked wealth from enslavement to mass industrialisation in the west.”

“Jasmine Mickens, a postgraduate student of history and government at Harvard University, said 'When it’s framed as a trade, it distorts the reality'.”

“The AU framework ... establishes that the inception of the trafficking in enslaved Africans during the so-called 'age of discovery' constituted the definitive break in world history, which inaugurated the break from localised feudal regimes to the modern world racial capitalist system.”

“The UN first acknowledged that slavery was a crime in a 2001 conference against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance in Durban, South Africa.”

“Experts involved in drafting the resolution say it is an attempt to get 'political recognition at the highest level' for one of the darkest eras in history.”

“Before Wednesday’s vote, Mahama lamented the continuing erasure of Black history in the US through increasing censorship of teaching the 'truth of slavery, segregation and racism' in schools.”

“Panashe Chigumadzi, a historian and rapporteur for the AU’s committee of experts on reparations for slavery, colonialism and apartheid, who drafted the framework, said that conference had had many limitations, including its framing of slavery as a 'retroactive moral judgment rather than a continuous legal reality'.”

“Ghana, which has been at the forefront of an effort across Africa and the Caribbean for reparatory justice, pushed for the terminology to be updated to reflect the lingering impact of chattel slavery.”

“The African Union has been working to ensure the codifying of chattel slavery as a crime that requires not just apologies, but reparatory justice.”

“Jasmine Mickens said: 'What people don’t seem to remember – due to all the efforts to erase history – is that black people, African people, have resisted the institution of chattel enslavement and the trafficking of Africans since the first hour the crime was committed on the shores of Africa.'”

“The UN resolution is not legally binding, but it is now expected to pave the way for more progress in a fight that scholars and some politicians say has been hampered by the rise of rightwing movements in the west.”