International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition - 23 August

2023 Theme: “Fighting slavery’s legacy of racism through transformative education”

The enslavement of over 13 million Africans during the Transatlantic Slave Trade was driven by the racist ideology that these women, men and children were inferior because of the colour of their skin. Countless families were torn apart. Scores of human beings lost their lives. Despite experiencing serious human rights violations, and intergenerational trauma over centuries, enslaved people persevered in their resilience, demonstrating courage and defiance against the conditions of enslavement, forced labour, and systemic violence and oppression.

The racist legacy of the Transatlantic Slave Trade reverberates today in harmful prejudices and beliefs which are still being perpetuated and continue to impact people of African descent across the world. Transformative education, which seeks to empower learners to see the social world critically and through an ethical lens to challenge and change the status quo as agents of change is essential to the work of teaching and learning about slavery in order to end racism and injustice and to build inclusive societies based on dignity and human rights for all people, everywhere.

This part of the article has been published on the United Nations' site at this link: https://www.un.org/en/rememberslavery/observance/2023

Exhibition "Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery" on display at UN Headquarters

United Nations Outreach Programme on the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum and supported by the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations and the Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York hosted the exhibition entitled "Slavery: Ten True Stories of Dutch Colonial Slavery" which was on display in the United Nations Visitors' Lobby from 27 February to 30 March 2023. Curated initially and displayed in 2021 by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, the Netherlands’ National Museum of Art and History.

The Ten True Stories exhibition was focusing on slavery in the Dutch colonial era, from the 17th to the 19th century – in Brazil, Suriname, and the Caribbean, as well as in South Africa, Asia, and the Netherlands itself. It presented ten true personal stories of people who were enslaved, people who profited from the system of slavery, and people who raised their voices against it. Their accounts came to life by scanning corresponding QR codes to listen to a pre-recorded audio of people living in the Netherlands who have a personal connection with the story.

In New York, the ten stories integral to the original Slavery exhibition was presented around one single artifact: wooden foot stocks known as a ‘tronco’ (from the Portuguese for ‘tree trunk’). Several enslaved people would be forced to have their ankles clamped in the holes to constrain them –to subject them to corporal punishment and prevent them from escaping. The foot stocks symbolize the more than one million people who were shipped in from around the world and forced to work, whether on plantations, as craftspeople, in mines, in transportation, or on military expeditions. The poster version of the exhibition is available for display until 31 December 2024 at other UN offices worldwide.

In response to the display of the exhibit, Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, remarked:

“The legacy of centuries of enslavement, exploitation, and colonial rule reverberates to this day. We must learn and teach the history of slavery: the crime against humanity; the unprecedented mass human trafficking; the unspeakable human rights violations. Behind the facts and figures are millions of human stories of untold suffering and pain. But also, stories of awe-inspiring resilience, courage, and defiance against the cruelty of oppressors. This powerful exhibition calls on us all to put an end to racism and injustice In our own time and make inclusive societies based on dignity and rights a reality everywhere.”

This part of the article has been published on the United Nations' site at this link: https://www.un.org/en/rememberslavery/exhibit