United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday said that the African continent “has yet to recover from the ravages of the slave trade or the subsequent era of colonization.” Ban was speaking at a ceremony at U.N. headquarters in New York to mark the international day of remembrance of the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade. From the 16th to the 19th century an estimated 9.5 to 12 million African people were shipped to the Western colonies and the so-called new world. Slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1807 but it was not until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 that discriminatory practices barring many African Americans from voting was outlawed. The U.N. chief hailed the recent election of Barack Obama, saying “a son of Africa was sworn in as president of the United States,” but deplored the legacy of racism where “people of African descent still struggle daily against entrenched prejudice that keeps them disproportionately in poverty.” Ban also deplored contemporary forms of slavery which include the trafficking of children, bonded servitude, forced prostitution and the use of children in warfare and the international drug trade. “It is essential that we speak out against such abuses,” Ban said noting that the universal declaration of human rights states “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
