By Joel Degue
Your Excellency,
The forthcoming Next Steps High-Level Conference on Reparations in Accra is not merely another diplomatic gathering. It is a historic moment in the centuries-long struggle for truth, justice, accountability, and reparatory justice for the crimes of enslavement, colonialism, racial exploitation, and the systematic extraction of African wealth.
For that reason, I write to urge, in the strongest possible terms, that French President Emmanuel Macron not be accorded a speaking role at this conference.
Mr President, this position is not born of hostility toward the French people. It is born of truth alive in history.
France was one of the principal European powers that profited from the transatlantic slave trade for centuries. Millions of Africans were uprooted, trafficked, brutalised and commodified through systems that enriched French ports, French merchants, French institutions, French cities and the French state itself. The suffering of countless African men, women, and children became part of the foundation upon which French power and prosperity were built.
Mr President, most troubling is the fact that the infamous Code Noir – the royal decree first promulgated in 1685 under Louis XIV to regulate and legitimise slavery in French colonies – remained formally unrepealed for nearly two centuries after slavery was abolished in France in 1848.
The law treated enslaved Africans as a commodity to be sold and property to be owned and provided a legal framework for a system of profound human abuse and degradation. Only on May 28, 2026, only after two months of the UN vote, did France’s National Assembly finally vote to repeal it and related slavery-era texts. This occurred 341 years after its creation and 178 years after the final abolition of slavery in France in 1848.
The following questions therefore arise:
What moral authority does France possess to lecture the world on reparatory justice when it has only now removed from its statute books one of the most notorious legal symbols of human enslavement?
What foundational legitimacy does President Macron have to address a conference dedicated to reparations when France continues to struggle with the fundamental question of accountability for slavery and colonialism?
What unquestionable credibility can be claimed when symbolic acts have not been matched by comprehensive reparatory measures?
Indeed, France’s recent actions appear to demonstrate that even today it remains uncertain about how fully to confront its own historical responsibilities. While President Macron has acknowledged the need to discuss reparations and historical accountability, France has yet to embrace the scale of justice demanded by the descendants of those who were enslaved and colonised.
The Accra conference must be a platform for those who have consistently advanced the cause of reparatory justice, not for representatives of states that are still taking their first tentative steps toward acknowledging the full implications of their historical conduct.
This conference belongs to Africa.
It belongs to the descendants of the enslaved.
It belongs to the nations that endured the horrors of the slave trade and colonial domination.
It belongs to those who have spent generations demanding recognition, restitution, repair, and justice.
President Macron’s presence as a participant may be diplomatically understandable. His presence as a speaker would be another matter entirely. A speaking platform conveys authority. It confers legitimacy. It suggests moral leadership.
France has not earned that distinction.
A nation that abstained from voting against slavery as the gravest crime against humanity in living history must not be permitted to speak on reparatory justice. A nation that waited until 2026 to formally repeal the legal architecture of slavery cannot reasonably present itself as a leading voice on reparations. A nation still wrestling with the consequences of its colonial past should listen before it speaks. A nation like France will not speak on slavery and reparations on African soil, let alone on Ghanaian soil.
Mr President, Accra must not become a stage upon which unrepentant former slave-trading and colonial powers seek to rehabilitate their image while the fundamental demands for reparatory justice remain unresolved.
The moral centre of this conference must remain firmly with Africa and the descendants of those who suffered under slavery and colonialism.
History demands nothing less. Ghana must show that.
I hope this position of mine will find favour with you, Mr President.
Thank you.
Respectfully,
Joel Degue: A History Student and Anti-Slavery Activist Dzelukope-Keta
+233242501638 / [email protected]
