Defending Roman-Dutch Law Against Ghana’s Bizarre UN Slavery Resolution
Excerpt Condemning European complicity is fair, because they were complicit. But it cannot be done non-reciprocally while ignoring the broader context. Slavery has been practiced across civilisations for millennia, including in parts of Africa and the Middle East into modern times. Estimates from the Global Slavery Index indicate millions still live in forms of modern slavery today – forced labour, forced marriage, and descent-based servitude – particularly in parts of Africa and Arab states. The condemned West is almost entirely free of slavery, while the condemning accusers still practice it at intolerable rates. What distinguishes the West is not the original sin of participation (shared by many societies), but the fact that Western civilisation, drawing on the initial Roman note on slavery’s tension with natural freedom, became the first civilisation to abolish it systematically…