Porto-Novo

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The final conference was held in Porto-Novo in the Republic of Benin and was organized in collaboration with the Association pour une réparation globale de l’esclavage (APRGE), with the support of the honorable Urbain Karim da Silva, the Musée da Silva and his majesty Kpoto-Zounme Hakpon III of Porto-Novo, who in 2013 made a public apology for the role his ancestors played in trans-Atlantic trafficking in enslaved Afrikans. The conference resulted in the publication of the Porto-Novo Declaration calling 'upon Afrikan states and their diplomatic leadership to join with civil society in order to formulate policies and establish operational committees, in order to institutionalize and advocate the claim for reparatory justice from those countries that implemented the criminal globalization of chattel enslavement of Afrikans, according to the principles of international law and the provisions of the United Nations within the International Decade of People of African Descent'.

The Bight of Benin was a primary site for transatlantic trafficking and is home to an important UNESCO world heritage site, the ‘Porte de Non-Retour’ (‘The Door of No Return’) at Ouidah. Significantly, the government of the Republic of Benin has a division in the Ministry of Culture for the ‘Return and Reconciliation of the Diaspora’, which has facilitated the repatriation of peoples from Brazil, Haiti, Guadeloupe and Martinique. On 3 June 2017, the APRGE and the Musée da Silva hosted a pre-colloquium in Porto-Novo, generously funded by M. Karim da Silva, which resulted in the collation of demands linked to reparations (see the pre-colloqium report below).