ROOTSSYNERGY UBUNTUCONNECTED ROUNDTABLE

From Declarations to Actions & Accountability

Side Event to the 5th Session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent 


DATE: 16 April 2026
TIME: Doors open 6pm
PLACE: Maison des associations, Geneva 

Organized by: Europe Pan-African Forum for People of African Descent (EPAF-PAD) and the AUADS African Union African Diaspora Sixth Region High Council

Co-organized with: Platform of the Dutch Slavery Past / NARECO (NL) · Tiye International · People of African Descent Belgium Observatory · PARCOE · Stop the Maangamizi Campaign · The African Diaspora Union · The Kingdom of Kush · DurbanPlus 25 Coalition · CRAN · UPAF.CH


CONTEXT

 On 25 March 2026, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/80/L.48 — Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime Against Humanity — spearheaded by Ghana on behalf of the 54-member African Group. The Resolution passed by 123 votes in favour, 3  against, and 52 abstentions. It is a significant political and declaratory advance: it names  the trafficking of enslaved Africans and racialized chattel enslavement as the gravest  crime against humanity, invokes existing international legal frameworks including the  principle that these crimes are not subject to statutory limitations, and creates a formal  political record that States can be held to in subsequent advocacy, diplomatic and legal  processes.   

However, every major European perpetrating State abstained. The effective  implementation of this Resolution in Europe requires the full recognition of African  Diaspora communities already organizing within the perpetrating States —  constitutionally recognized as Africa’s Sixth Region under the AU Constitutive Act (Article  3(q), 2003), present in the communities, grassroots organizations, civil society networks,  social movements and scholar-activist spaces, as well as the parliaments, courts and  media of the States that bear the greatest obligation for reparatory justice, and uniquely  positioned to conduct the organizing, advocacy and conscientization work within the perpetrating States that cannot be done from outside their borders. That role cannot be assumed, substituted or overlooked in any process that follows this Resolution.   This Roundtable convenes African Diaspora organizations and their partners in Europe to move beyond recognition and into strategy — to examine what the Resolution opens, what it leaves unaddressed, and what the organized African Diaspora in Europe must now build and consolidate to ensure that declarations become actions and accountability.


OBJECTIVES

  • • To assess the impact and implications of Resolution A/80/L.48 from the specific standpoint of African Diaspora communities in Europe, as part of Africa's Sixth Region organizing within the perpetrating States.  
  • • To examine the concrete strategies available to the organized African Diaspora in Europe for the period following the Resolution’s adoption — in parliaments, courts, media, institutions, and community spaces.  
  • • To advance the operationalization of the African Union’s Sixth Region architecture, insisting that every process following this Resolution centres African Diaspora communities as genuine agents and co-architects of reparatory frameworks.  
  • • To strengthen partnerships, align programmes, and build shared capacity among African Diaspora organizations and their allies across Europe for the sustained advocacy ahead.  


DIALOGUE TOPICS  

  1. 1.  The importance of the involvement of the African Union Sixth Region Diaspora  in Europe — asserting rights already enshrined in AU law, demanding the  operationalization of the Sixth Region Diaspora Advisory Board, and ensuring that  the African Diaspora in Europe is recognized not as a peripheral constituency but  as the vanguard political force already present and organizing within the  perpetrating States.  
  2. 2. Impact of Resolution A/80/L.48: where do we go from here in Europe? —  examining what the Resolution’s legal architecture opens, what its gaps and silences require of us, and what the concrete advocacy, legal and political strategies are for African Diaspora organizations in Europe in the period ahead.  
  3. 3. Strengthening voices and building partnerships for reparatory justice — deepening collaboration across European African Diaspora organizations, aligning on shared frameworks and demands, and building the political infrastructure required to hold perpetrating States accountable.  


 

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