International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Quotes…
International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade 2023 is on Saturday, 25 March 2023.
Human Trafficking scares a man born in the 21st century, but Slave Trade was far more dreadful human practice that exploited millions of people on the face of Earth. The European colonizers smuggled more than 15 million people including men, women, and children from the African continent to America and Europe. The United Nations website reads that this transatlantic trade was one of the darkest chapters in human history. Many captives were taken to the New Found Land (America) and around 95% of the captives who were brought to America were Africans. The trade was at its peak during 1501 and 1830 as the Europeans who traveled to America during this period brought four times more Africans as slaves with them. The day of 25 March is celebrated to commemorate the victims of the transatlantic trade. The global leadership at the UN platform aspired to commemorate the victims of the terrible human exploitation and installed The Ark of Return as the Permanent Memorial to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, at the Visitors’ Plaza of UN Headquarters in New York.
The Ark of Return is a Permanent Memorial to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Designed by American architect Rodney Leon, it was unveiled at the United Nations in New York on 25 March 2015 and stands as a reminder that the legacies of slavery – including racism and inequality – continue to affect us.
Despite its abolition, slavery continues in modern forms to this day, the ultimate violation of the right to autonomy. Another legacy of a barbaric system when human beings are regarded as “other” and “less than”: racism and prejudice.
This Friday, the will mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade under the theme: “Stories of Courage: Resistance to Slavery and Unity against Racism.”
International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Quotes
No Racism
Freedom Forever
Remember Slavery
“This (slavery) is not only alarming; it is unacceptable in the 21st Century.”
(Mrs. María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés)
“Let us stand united against racism and together build societies based on dignity, equality and solidarity.”
Behind the facts and figures are millions of human stories. Stories of untold suffering. But also stories of awe-inspiring courage.
Today, we “pay tribute to the millions of Africans who were torn from their homelands and.. stand up in solidarity against racism everywhere”
Today, we remember the victims of enslavement and the transatlantic trade that lasted over 400 years. As we reflect on its enduring legacy, let us unite to eradicate the global scourge of racism.
On Remember Slavery Day we pay tribute to the millions of Africans who were torn from their homelands during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. People of African descent confront racial discrimination to this day. Let’s Fight Racism & build societies based on equality.
Friday’s Remember Slavery Day is an opportunity to demonstrate respect & understanding towards victims of slavery. It also allows us to reinforce our determination to Fight Racism, which remains a legacy of one of the darkest chapters in human history.
“It is time to abolish human exploitation once and for all, and to recognize the equal and unconditional dignity of each and every individual. Today, let us remember the victims and freedom fighters of the past so that they may inspire future generations to build just societies.”
Audrey Azoulay, Director General,
In a world brought down by a global pandemic when inequities have emerged from the shadows of ignorance and complacency and when discrimination and hate speech are its own plague, we must not let down our guard in dismantling division-sowing racism and prejudice. Our challenge, our legacy is a world free of both.
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Let us give life to those words. Let us honour the victims of the slave trade by remembering their struggle. Let us carry it forward until no person is deprived of liberty, dignity and human rights. (Secretary-General’s Message)
Let us join together and remember and pay tribute to the millions of victims of slavery, and the pain and the suffering and the violence that has been passed down from generation to generation.
And then, let us honor them and their legacy by taking swift action to end racism and root out oppression wherever it remains. Ambassador Richard Mills
An ode to pride, resilience and hope of our afro-descendant brothers and sisters, and I quote:
“Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise. I rise. I rise.”
Maya Angelou
Slavery is one of those tragic moments in our history.
For three centuries, millions of human beings -men, women and children- were brutally uprooted from their homes in Africa and were bought and sold as objects, stripped of all dignity.
Each of those persons suffered the horrors of exploitation, violence and exclusion and the dramatic consequences of it all still linger in our world.
On this international day, we pay tribute to the victims of this abhorrent practice. We honor their resistance, their courage and their fortitude.
Esteemed António Guterres, Secretary General,
“The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers … The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.”
(African writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano described the horrific experience of the “middle passage” in his 1789 narrative)
