Six UN Member States handover cheques for Slave Trade Memorial

Six United Nations Members States have confirmed contributions to a Permanent Memorial to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade last Friday 26, September.  At a high-level ceremony, held  recently at United Nations Headquarters, representatives of the Netherlands, New Zealand, Qatar, Senegal and Spain handed over symbolic cheques to the Chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee, Courtenay Rattray, Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the United Nations.  Prior to that, the Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation from Latvia also made a contribution.

A Committee of interested States — chaired by Jamaica — oversees the Permanent Memorial project, with Member States from CARICOM and the African Union playing a primary role.

The monument called the Ark of Return is the design of Rodney Leon, a Haitian national who is also the architect and designer of the African Burial Ground National Monument in Manhattan.

The Permanent Memorial at the United Nations to Honour the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade is an initiative which originated in 2007 and which has gained the unanimous support of the United Nations General Assembly.  Seven successive General Assembly resolutions — the last of which, A/RES/68/7, was adopted on 21 October 2013 — have endorsed the project and committed the United Nations to having the memorial placed at a prominent location at Headquarters to acknowledge the tragedy and consider the legacy of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.

For more on this topic go to UNESCO.