Reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Crimes of Colonialism: The Current Agenda of the UN and the African Union

In recent years, the agenda of reparations to Africa by Western countries for the crimes of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism has been gaining increasing popularity in both academic and political discourse. The study analyzes contemporary discourse in both political, legal and economic terms, as well as the representation of this issue in Russian and Soviet academic literature. Particular attention is paid to the formation of political discourse, including in the context of the work of the Group of Eminent Persons established in 1992 in West Africa in order to draw attention to this topic and a number of conferences held on private initiative in the 1990s. The researshers show how the issue of reparations justice has reached the level of the UN and the African Union, practical steps taken in this regard and their consequences. The article examines the political and legal aspects of paying reparations to Africa in Western discourse, including the problem of retroactivity of legal norms, repeatedly raised by Western experts, and its political deconstruction. Particular attention is paid to the strategy of Western countries related to responding to the problem of reparative justice. The structures sponsored by Western funds are quite closely integrated into the reparative agenda of the African Union. In this context, the practical implementation of the UN and African Union decisions in this area will largely depend on the level of demonstrated African agency. If the outcome is favorable, the reparations received can be an important source of financing for the sovereign development of the African continent.