Viola Fletcher was just seven years old when she was forcibly displaced from her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, by an armed mob which destroyed the predominantly Black enclave of Greenwood, killing hundreds of residents.
Commemorating the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition on Wednesday, the head of the UN’s education, science and culture agency UNESCO, emphasized the urgent need to end exploitation.
On this week’s Lid Is On, Conor Lennon speaks to two experts on racism against people of African Descent, on the insidious nature of everyday racism, the importance of reparations, and why an acceptance that the wealth of developed countries is built on the back of oppressed, Black people, is liberating for people of all races.
“We can’t heal by ignoring what happened” – that’s one of the key demands for greater racial justice in the United States, from the founder of the influential 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones. For this latest edition of our ‘Lid is On’ podcast, she sat down with UN News’s Ben Malor to discuss the need for a deeper reckoning with the history of slavery at home, and worldwide - including the “essential” provision of reparations for Black Americans, today.
New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones, best known for the 1619 Project, which frames slavery as one of the core elements of the history of the United States, addressed the UN General Assembly during a commemoration of the transatlantic slave trade on Tuesday. She explained to UN News how the Project came about.
In this week’s show: there are 40 million slaves today around the world - find out what the UN is doing to help them; also, real concerns about COVID vaccine hoarding linked to the rise of Omicron, and an alert over a desperate hunger crisis that’s affecting millions in the Sahel, which is driving violence and displacement, that’s being felt as far away as the West African coast.
Attacks against so-called slaves in Mali are on the rise and authorities must do more to prevent them, two independent UN human rights experts said on Monday.
Commemorating the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, the United Nations Secretary-General highlighted the impact of the contemporary forms of slavery, underscoring that such abhorrent practices have no space in the twenty-first century.
In reviewing, assessing and acknowledging the effects of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, enslavement and colonialism, the groundbreaking Durban World Conference of 2001, represented a “milestone” in the common fight against racism, xenophobia and related intolerance, the UN human rights chief said on Monday.
