The U.S., Israel and Argentina on Wednesday voted against a United Nations resolution led by Ghana to label the international slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and call for reparations.
The resolution received 123 votes from the U.N. General Assembly in favor and 52 countries abstained, including all 27 European Union members, the United Kingdom, Australia, Oman and Japan.
The resolution also focused on the need to address historic wrongs toward Africans and people of the diaspora, and it placed emphasis on claims for reparations.
Diplomats cheered and some danced over the resolution’s adoption.
Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Dan Negrea called the resolution’s text “highly problematic in countless respects.” Negrea said in a statement that the U.S. “does not recognize a legal right to reparations for historical wrongs that were not illegal under international law at the time they occurred.”
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