‎"An Unfinished Journey Toward Justice": Mahama Takes Ghana's Reparatory Justice Campaign to the UN Stage ‎

President John Dramani Mahama used a high-profile platform at the sidelines of the 81st UN General Assembly on 23 September to press one of the most ambitious items on his foreign policy agenda: turning years of scattered, voluntary artefact returns into a permanent, UN-backed system for restituting Africa's looted cultural heritage.

Speaking at a High-Level side event co-hosted with Germany and France, Mahama framed the issue in deliberately human terms, insisting the call for restitution "is not simply a story about static objects in museum cases," but one about people, dignity, and what he called an unfinished journey toward justice.

From acknowledgment to architecture
The heart of Mahama's address was a shift in emphasis: away from celebrating individual acts of return, toward demanding a coordinated global system.

He proposed a permanent, institutionalised mechanism under the United Nations to standardise the legal and diplomatic procedures around provenance research, archive access, and restitution claims arguing that leaving the process to the discretion of individual museums or governments has produced only a piecemeal patchwork rather than durable justice.

He was careful to credit the countries that have moved: he thanked the Netherlands for cataloguing roughly 2,000 Ghanaian artefacts for possible return, acknowledged Germany's engagement with Ghana's Kpando traditional area, and recognised France's legislative steps on restitution, citing the earlier return of the Djidji Ayokwe talking drum to Côte d'Ivoire as a working model.

But his message to those same governments was pointed: "moral justice cannot rely on piecemeal generosity or isolated acts of goodwill." He also disclosed that the United Kingdom and Portugal have signalled willingness to engage with Ghana's reparatory justice push.

A notable, if qualified, opening from Washington

Perhaps the most diplomatically significant line in the event came from Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who confirmed that the United States despite voting against the landmark UN resolution recognising the trafficking and enslavement of Africans as the gravest crime against humanity has formally indicated it is willing to begin working with the reparatory justice movement.

Coming from a government that rejected the underlying resolution, that is a meaningful, if cautious, crack in what had looked like outright opposition, and Ablakwa was quick to publicly commend it alongside Germany and France's role as co-hosts.

Framing it as reconciliation, not confrontation

Both Mahama and Ablakwa worked deliberately to pre-empt the obvious criticism that a reparations campaign is really about assigning blame to today's Western governments for crimes committed generations ago.

Ablakwa acknowledged the subject is "emotive" and will require "honest but tense discussions," but stressed that the perpetrators of slavery "are dead and gone," and that it now falls to the living generation to build the fairer world the campaign seeks.

Mahama echoed the same register elsewhere in his UNGA appearances this week, telling delegates that "Ghana does not come to this hall to assign guilt for the past. We come to forge a partnership with the present to repair the future." Ablakwa was equally direct about intent, insisting the Ghana-led effort "is not about dividing the world," but about healing, reconciliation, and, in his words, building "a world without racism, a world without discrimination."

Ghana's institutional weight behind the push

This was not a one-off speech. Mahama attended in his capacity as Chair of the Global Advisory Panel on Reparatory Justice and as the African Union's Champion on Reparations, giving Ghana's campaign continental institutional backing rather than framing it as a purely national grievance.

The event drew a striking roster of allied leaders and officials, including Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, the presidents of Namibia, Liberia, Senegal, Cabo Verde and Suriname, the prime ministers of Trinidad and Tobago and Haiti, UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany, and African Union Deputy Chairperson Selma Malika Haddadi a lineup spanning Africa and the Caribbean diaspora that signals this is being built as a coordinated Global South initiative, not a Ghana-only demand. Ghana has also pointed to its own recent success as proof of concept, citing the return of the Mpomponsuo sword as a model of what restitution done right can look like.

Beyond artefacts: the wider Accra agenda

The cultural restitution push is explicitly one pillar of a larger reparatory justice framework Ghana has been building since hosting a conference in Accra in June 2026, which produced what officials call the "Accra Next Steps" commitments a broader set of demands that also includes formal apologies, debt relief and financial compensation.

Framing restitution as the achievable first step in that larger, more contentious agenda is itself a strategic choice: artefacts and human remains generate less political resistance in Western capitals than debt relief or cash compensation, making cultural return the pillar most likely to produce visible, near-term wins that can build momentum for the harder asks still to come.

What to watch next
The test of Wednesday's rhetoric will be whether "permanent international system" moves from a UN side-event talking point into an actual UN mechanism, given the reluctance of major holding institutions to cede full control over provenance decisions, and whether the tentative American opening under Ablakwa's account translates into anything more concrete than a stated willingness to talk.

For Ghana, the political value of leading this campaign, at the AU level and now on the UN stage, is already secured regardless of how quickly the artefacts themselves come home.

Mustapha Bature Sallama
Medical/ Science Communicator,
Private Investigator, Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Analysis,

International Conflict Management and Peacebuilding. (USIP)

[email protected]
+233555275880

Sources
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GBC Ghana Online, "UNGA81: President Mahama outlines three pillars for next phase of reparatory justice," Sep 2026. https://www.gbcghanaonline.com/general/mahama-reparatory-justice-pillars/2026/

MyJoyOnline, "Mahama urges Netherlands, Germany and France to deepen restitution efforts," Sep 2026. https://www.myjoyonline.com/mahama-urges-netherlands-germany-and-france-to-deepen-restitution-efforts/

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MyJoyOnline, "'Africa's cultural heritage story must continue with its return' Mahama insists," Sep 2026. https://www.myjoyonline.com/africas-cultural-heritage-story-must-continue-with-its-return-mahama-insists/

MyJoyOnline, "Full text: Mahama's speech at high-level side event on return and restitution of cultural properties and heritage," Sep 2026. https://www.myjoyonline.com/full-text-mahamas-speech-at-high-level-side-event-on-return-and-restitution-of-cultural-properties-and-heritage/

The High Street Journal, "US, European Countries Ready to Engage on Reparatory Justice Ablakwa," Sep 2026 (Accra Next Steps commitments, June 2026 conference background). https://thehighstreetjournal.com/us-european-countries-ready-to-engage-on-reparatory-justice-ablakwa/

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Ghana Ministry of Foreign Affairs, "'Restitution of Cultural Property and Heritage' is a key demand in the global strategic framework on reparatory justice for Africans and People of African Descent," 22 Sep 2026. https://mfa.gov.gh/index.php/restitution-of-cultural-property-and-heritage-is-a-key-demand-in-the-global-strategic-framework-on-reparatory-justice-for-africans-and-people-of-african-descent/