Reality check: why talk of reparations is a nonstarter for Africa

On March 25, the UN General Assembly Hall erupted in applause. By a margin of 123 to three, the world body adopted a resolution declaring the transatlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity and, most significantly, calling for reparations. For the African Union, which has designated 2026–2036 as the “decade of reparations,” this was the diplomatic equivalent of a moon landing, a vindication of history that has been centuries in the making. 

But in 2026, this is a case of strategic misalignment. It was the right step. It is also, regrettably, on entirely the wrong foot. 

To believe that this resolution will translate into a single dollar of compensation for the descendants of the enslaved is to fundamentally misunderstand the current state of the UN, the geopolitical fracture of the 2020s, and the difference between moral victories and political realities. By tethering the reparations fight to a paralyzed UN, African diplomats have won a debate in a burning building. 

The first and most pragmatic problem is that the venue for this historic demand is itself facing insolvency. While the General Assembly was debating historical debts, the UN Secretariat was frantically trying to keep the lights on. The organization is currently navigating a race to bankruptcy, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned late last year. The 2026 regular budget has been slashed to about $3.2 billion, resulting in nearly 19 percent cuts in staffing. Moreover, major contributors are either in arrears or increasingly selective in their commitments. This is not a body positioned to administer what would be the largest financial transfer in modern history. 

Even if one assumes perfect consensus on principle, the UN has neither the fiscal architecture nor the coercive authority to extract, allocate, and monitor reparations at scale. It cannot tax. It cannot compel compliance from sovereign states. It depends on the very governments being asked to pay. 

Then there is the sobering geopolitical reality. 

Yes, 123 nations voted in favor. But the US, Israel, and Argentina voted against it. The entire EU, and the UK, the very powers from whom reparations are sought, abstained. 

Western powers do not recognize a legal right to reparations for wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred. This “retroactivity” argument is a legal fortress that will not be abandoned, regardless of how many moral condemnations the General Assembly passes. By pushing for a framework that requires the voluntary financial suicide of Western treasuries, the reparations movement has handed its opponents an easy refusal. 

This was the diplomatic equivalent of a moon landing.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

The result is predictable since the debate shifts into an endless loop of moral assertion and legal rebuttal. It generates speeches, not settlements. 

It then brings us to the “wrong foot.” 

A single-minded focus on reparations allows the West to engage in endless stonewalling, while ignoring the structural inequities that actually keep Africa poor today. It allows them to point to the complexity of the “crime,” citing the uncomfortable historical fact of African elite complicity in the slave trade. It will reduce 2026 to merely a year of “dialogue” and “remembrance” rather than writing checks. 

Evidently, the deeper issue is not the absence of historical acknowledgment. It is the persistence of current structural constraints that replicate, in economic form, the asymmetries of the past. 

Consider the following, for example. African countries contribute less than 4 percent of global carbon emissions, yet face some of the highest climate vulnerability. The continent is warming faster than the global average. Climate shocks are already shaving between 2 and 5 percent off annual gross domestic product in several countries, with projections suggesting double-digit contractions in worst-case scenarios by 2030. 

At the same time, African governments borrow at significantly higher costs than their peers. The so-called “African premium” persists despite relatively modest default rates in many cases. Capital that could finance infrastructure, energy transitions, or industrialization is instead absorbed by debt servicing. 

This is where the moral argument for reparations has real analytical power, but only if it is translated into mechanisms that operate within existing financial systems. A more effective approach would pivot from the language of compensation to the mechanics of capital. 

Take sovereign debt structures, for instance. Introducing automatic suspension clauses triggered by climate disasters would allow countries to redirect funds toward recovery rather than servicing debt in the aftermath of shocks. It does not require new money, only contractual redesign. It aligns creditor and debtor incentives by reducing the likelihood of disorderly defaults. 

Or, better yet, consider credit enhancement. If advanced economies used their balance sheets to partially guarantee African climate investments, borrowing costs could fall dramatically. A project financed at 10–12 percent becomes viable at 3–4 percent. The difference is transformative. It determines whether renewable energy scales or stalls, whether infrastructure is built or deferred. 

Effectiveness, not symbolism, should be the benchmark.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Then, there is the issue of underutilized pools of international reserves. 

Special Drawing Rights issued in recent years sit largely idle in advanced economies. Redirecting and leveraging these assets through multilateral development banks could unlock hundreds of billions in financing without requiring new taxpayer outlays. 

These are not labeled as reparations. But functionally, they address the same imbalance: a world in which those least responsible for historical and environmental damage bear disproportionate economic costs. 

There is also a political advantage to this reframing. Demanding direct transfers framed as reparations triggers resistance rooted in domestic politics, legal precedent, and fiscal constraints, among other things. Alternatively, framing it as risk-sharing, credit support, and financial restructuring fits within existing policy frameworks. It is easier to pass, easier to justify, and harder to oppose without appearing obstructionist. 

In other words, it moves the debate from morality alone to mutual interest.

The tragedy of the current approach is not that it is wrong in principle. It is that it expends diplomatic capital on a demand that cannot clear the hurdles of today’s geopolitical environment. It risks turning a powerful moral case into a symbolic exercise, which would be regrettable since Africa does not lack arguments. It lacks leverage in the forums where those arguments are being made. 

The “right step” was to internationalize the conversation and force acknowledgment of historical injustice. The “wrong foot” is insisting that acknowledgment must take the form of direct reparations mediated through an institution ill-equipped to deliver them.

That shift may be less emotionally satisfying. It does not produce a headline figure or a moment of closure. But it is far more likely to produce results because in 2026 and beyond, effectiveness, not symbolism, should be the benchmark.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.

X: @HafedAlGhwell