African States Demand Global Acknowledgment of Historic and Tremendous Atrocities and Long-Overdue Restitution
African leaders on Sunday intensified their campaign for global acknowledgment and legal accountability for atrocities committed during the colonial period — along with concrete reparations to address their enduring impact.
Gathering in Algiers, senior officials and heads of state assembled to advance an African Union mandate adopted earlier this year, one that urges comprehensive justice and material compensation for communities devastated by colonial domination.
Opening the conference, Algerian Foreign Minister Ahmed Attaf stressed that his country’s harrowing experience under French occupation illustrates why the continent must insist on restitution and the recovery of plundered assets. He emphasized that any mechanism for compensation should be grounded in law, ensuring that reparations are regarded as “neither benevolence nor charity.”
“Africa has every right to demand formal and unequivocal recognition of the crimes inflicted upon its peoples throughout the colonial era,” Attaf declared. “Such recognition is the essential first step toward redressing the long-term damage of that epoch — damage that still manifests in exclusion, marginalization and chronic underdevelopment across our nations.”
While modern international treaties outlaw slavery, torture and apartheid — and the UN Charter prohibits territorial conquest — none explicitly define colonialism itself as a criminal act.
This omission dominated discussions at the African Union’s February summit, where leaders debated the creation of a unified African position on reparations and the classification of colonization as a crime against humanity.
The financial devastation inflicted by colonial exploitation is widely regarded as immense, with some assessments estimating that Africa’s stolen wealth reaches into the trillions. European empires extracted vast quantities of natural resources — from gold and diamonds to rubber and other precious materials — often through horrific violence, enriching themselves while local populations sank into poverty.
In recent years, African nations have increasingly demanded the return of cultural treasures and artifacts seized during the colonial era and still displayed in European institutions.
Attaf noted that Algeria was a deliberate choice as host for the gathering, given its history as one of the most ruthlessly colonized territories under French rule and the brutal war it fought to reclaim its sovereignty.
The consequences of that history were profound: nearly a million European settlers enjoyed superior political and economic privileges, even as Algeria remained legally part of France and Algerian men were drafted to fight in World War II. Hundreds of thousands perished in the war for independence, during which French forces carried out torture, forced disappearances and widespread destruction in an effort to suppress Algerian resistance.
“Our continent retains Algeria’s tragic ordeal as an extraordinary example — almost unmatched in its scale, logic and methods,” Attaf remarked.
Algeria’s past has also shaped its position on Western Sahara, the disputed territory once administered by Spain and now contested by Morocco and the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Attaf described the territory as a lingering case of incomplete decolonization, echoing the African Union’s official doctrine, even as a growing number of member states have aligned with Morocco’s claim. He referred to Western Sahara as “the continent’s final colony” and praised the Sahrawi people’s struggle to uphold their internationally recognized right to self-determination — a principle reaffirmed repeatedly by the United Nations.
For decades, Algeria has urged the international community to confront the legacies of colonialism through binding legal frameworks, though Algerian leaders often move cautiously to avoid heightening tensions with France, where the memory of the war remains politically charged.
French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged in 2017 that aspects of France’s colonial record constituted a crime against humanity, yet he declined to issue an official apology and urged Algerians to avoid what he described as dwelling on historical grievances.
Mohamed Arezki Ferrad, a member of Algeria’s parliament, told the Associated Press that reparations must extend beyond symbolic gestures. He pointed out that numerous Algerian treasures seized by France — including Baba Merzoug, a famed 16th-century cannon still kept in Brest — have not been returned.
Source: Araba Sey
