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Yesterday, a Declaration of the trafficking of enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity was voted at UNO. As usual, Israel and the USA voted against. How did your country vote? Any thoughts about it?
the thread on .world about this one is pretty gross.
Fuck Argentina.
I'm from there, all I can say is... President Xi, my country yearns for freedom
I'm from Buenos Aires and I say kill us all
As someone who isn't from Buenos Aires that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make /hj
We've always been a colony of 
and 
Now the government doesn't care to hide it at all, quite the contrary the president is very explicit about his love affair with yankizionists.
And let's not pretend that the opposition is any different. Except for some small trotskyist parties with no real political weight.
Liberal idealism plagues us, we need more political education yesterday
Here's the map of the vote to really drive the point home.
It's always the same map
Cries quietly in Indigenous slaughter
I hope your time will come too, it's crazy how overshadowed this topic is
What does this vote achieve?
It's meant to help get reparations for imperialized people
Ah cool. I get Canadas vote then, kinda support it but poor wording. Among the gravest or something similar, Holocaust and Palestine should be up there.
Which is fucked, it's like generational violence but an entire people instead of a family
It is four centuries of colonial violence, being kidnapped, stripped of your language, culture and humanity, tortured and raped and forced you and your descendants for hundreds of years to work to death just so that your owners could afford to not do anything productive. I can see how it's the gravest. If people are gonna use this as an excuse not to care for other crimes against humanity they're sadistic fools and should be called out as such.
It's the sad reality of politics and agreements, simple wording can screw you over in ways you don't yet see. Id be very interested to see what difference among the gravest would make. I'd be very disappointed in Canada to abstain then. And curious if any supporters change their vote.
the Gravest Crime against Humanity
So now, there's layers on suffering.
The ones that died on manmade famines, the ones that died on slavery (not chattel), the holocaust, the ones that got tortured by isis, etc... Didn't endure enough suffering.
I don't support the "Gravest Crime against Humanity" wording in the resolution, so I have no problems with the way my country voted.
wtf ireland, sweden, ukraine, united kingdom, canada, japan, iceland, hungary?
Abstaining feels like it is just as bad as voting no.
I was surprised to see all the nordics abstaining from voting (really, almost all of Europe). I would say that abstaining is a long-shot from voting "no", especially if you see it as overwhelmingly likely that this will go through without your vote. Voting no is explicitly stating that you're against the formulation, while voting yes is saying that you're explicitly for it. Abstaining can indicate that you are (for example) for the intent, but have reservations about the specific wording. In that case, you may not want to stop the declaration from going through, but still want to signal that you have reservations and don't want to unequivocally support it.
Why am I even surprised by the US being the US anymore.
"Hey you know this thing thats super bad?"
"Of course we've known it's bad for many years now"
"Well we should officially condemn it."
"Whoa whoa let's hold up and think about that for a second."
You only posted half of the title.
Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity
The "Gravest Crime against Humanity" part honestly explains why so many countries abstained.
The slave trade was an absolute atrocity and certainly one of the gravest crimes against humanity but should we label it as the gravest crime? Do we really need to introduce a ranking between slavery, the holocaust and dozens of other genocides instead of agreeing that they are/were all bad without picking one as the worst?
Sadly, I would bet that it's the jewish lobby that pushed a lot of countries to oppose this. They have this need to make the holocaust be the worst thing that has ever happened to any people in the history of time.
The holocaust certainly bad, it's among the worst mass killings of all time, and the fact that it happened in relatively modern times makes it worse because the world generally isn't as brutal as it once was. Is it worse than the Mongol invasions, which may have killed more than 10% of the entire world's population at the time? Worse than historical wars in China which killed tens of millions at a time when the entire world's population was under 200 million? Where would you rank African slavery in that? Is it less bad because fewer people died, or worse because there are things worth than death? I don't really think it should be something you rank at all. And, I'd also oppose any attempt to rank any of them as "the gravest crime against humanity", because what's the point of that?
Yeah, exactly. Why make it a competition? The wording is honestly just bizarre
There's a pattern lead by the US, but they are all different, in my opinion. Where are you from? How did your country vote? How do you feel about it?
Wrong
There's normally a reason when that assortment of countries chooses to abstain (the no voters are normally just evil). In this case it's likely the use of the word "gravest". I'd say the holocaust was worse, at least in the slave trade the people were just a means to an end. The holocaust involved torture by design and aimed to erase an entire religion.
Others may disagree, but there's at least room for doubt on the declaration that it's the "gravest".
EU's stated reason for abstaining is
1, use of superlatives
2, bias in presentation, against UN charter
3, they're against reparations
I dunno man, it really just smells like they don't want to pay up for their crimes against humanity. When your first two points are nit picking and your last one is "and we were told we wouldn't have to answer for shitty things before we made rules about it", it's kinda giving away why you're against it.
I dunno man, it really just smells like they donβt want to pay up for their crimes against humanity
Why does it counts only from 17th century onwards? Why only for 1 specific situation?
Part of the EU explanation:
We were prepared to support a text that emphasises the scale of the atrocity of the transatlantic slave trade, the importance of remembrance, and the need to continue combating slavery in its contemporary forms. Instead, the text before us raises a number of legal and factual concerns that we cannot overlook.
3 arguments
First, the use of superlatives in the context of crimes against humanity is not legally accurate, such as the use of "gravest" in the title and throughout the text, which implies a hierarchy among atrocity crimes, when no legal hierarchy between crimes against humanity exists. It risks undermining the harm suffered by all victims of these crimes and lacks legal clarity crucial for ensuring accountability. We firmly reject introducing ambiguity in this respect.
Second, the selective inclusion of lengthy, historical, and contentious references to regional jurisprudence and selective and unbalanced interpretation of historical events - such as in Preambular Paragraphs 21 and 23 - is at odds with accepted UN practice, as well as the stated universal and forward looking objective of this initiative. It risks creating divisions when unity is both necessary and achievable. The role of the General Assembly is not to substitute itself to the academic debate amongst historians.
Third, we are also concerned by certain legal references and assertions that are either inaccurate or inconsistent with international law. This includes suggestions of a retroactive application of international rules which was non-existent at the time and claims for reparations, which is incompatible with established principles of international law. The principle of non-retroactivity, a fundamental cornerstone of the international legal order, must be strictly upheld. References to claims for reparations also lack a sound legal basis. Any framework for reparatory justice must be grounded in existing multilateral instruments.
It's the Same Map As Always, USA + vassals Vs Rest of the World.
Is it? It's not really subtle.
The yearly vote about blockade on Cuba is kind of an exception, even EU and the Oceanian Plankton usually vote "for".
My favourite is the voting about combating the glorification of nazism, really says all
