The Campaign to celebrate the UNESCO 2004
International Year of the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition

2004 has been marked by the UNESCO as the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. We at Ligali believe that is the responsibility of African communities worldwide to help define and mark these occasions with the culturally appropriate events. We would expect other communities taking part to assist, following our lead with governments and national media organisations consulting with us before embarking on what is a sensitive but very important issue.

Ligali is very disappointed with apathetic stance held by the British Government and national educational and media organisations in publicising their intentions to commemorate this year and the key individual dates. At the very least we feel that the Home Office could publicise the United Nations proclamation Of 2004 as the year recognising the “Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition” and offer support to community based organisations that wish to engage in this commemoration.

“By institutionalizing memory, resisting the onset of oblivion, recalling the memory of a tragedy that for long years remained hidden or unrecognized, and by assigning it its proper place in the human conscience, we respond to our duty to remember. To that end, we must promote the history of the slave trade and slavery, and make it known to the general public ; we must also devote ourselves to rigorous scientific research that highlights the whole historical truth about the tragedy in a constructive perspective. As a matter of urgency this major episode in the history of humanity, whose consequences are permanently imprinted in the world’s geography and economy, should take its full place in the school textbooks and curricula of every country in the world.”
Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

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UNESCO, as lead agency for this International Year, has set itself the following objectives :

• Raise awareness among the Organization’s Member States of the horrors of the slave trade and slavery, as well as the struggles that led to its abolition ;

• Celebrate the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution, which resulted in the creation of the first Black Republic, and consequently encouraged the progressive emancipation of the peoples of the Caribbean and South America ;

• Mobilize the international community, the academic world and civil society to clarify the aftermath of this tragedy and exert a renewed vigilance against new forms of slavery.

More especially, some precise objectives have been set :

• Ensure a deepened knowledge of the slave trade and of slavery for the emergence of a new historic consciousness in and beyond the countries that were affected by this history ;

• Restore broken links and broaden solidarity between the African continent and its diasporas, in particular through the networking of its intellectual community ;

• Study and promote the modalities of this dialogue between cultures, and foster peaceful coexistence between peoples by highlighting the interactions generated by the slave trade and slavery in artistic expressions, spiritual traditions and the transfer of know-how ;

• Collect and disseminate scientific information on the abolition of slavery; Study and visit the places and sites of this history; Celebrate the events that marked the abolition process and the memory of the personalities who, in whatever capacity, pioneered such abolition.

Eight specific dates were marked by UNESCO as days for celebration

Date	Event
21 March	International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
7 April	commemorative day of the death of Toussaint Louverture
21 May	World Day of Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development
25 May	Africa Day
23 August	International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition
16 November	International Day for Tolerance
2 December	International Day for the Abolition of Slavery
10 December	Human Rights Day

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Some of the 2004 Media Stories on Slavery

The Channel 4 contribution during March 2004 was a story on the Richard and Judy Show, 18 March. During which in an interview with so called ‘pirate expert’ David Cordingly on ‘North African’ Barbury pirates they all asserted that Africans were responsible for inflicting exactly the same level of cruelty upon Europeans as that levelled against Africans during the trans-atlantic ‘slave trade’. Judy went as far as to suggest that there was a possible ‘cover up’ because ‘because people, liberals and writers, prefer to display the white people as evil colonialist rather than as victims [sic]’ .

The BBC contribution during April 2004 was a story on BBC News 24 where it broadcast a grossly offensive news story by reporter Allan Little. It said that UNISEF had said that more than a million children a year were traded as slaves or prostitutes and that Nigeria was the Key transit point. The story continued on by stating that 40% of ‘street children’ were traded many by their parents for money. The reporter stated that “for a poor family here [in Nigeria] a child is either a economic burden or economic resources [sic]”. With contributions by former Hollywood producer David Puttnam, President of UNISEF, UK the story claimed that “15 million children [in Nigeria] were in effect slaves… it is a way of life”. The story concluded by describing it as a ‘21st Century Slave Trade’.

The Independent paper also ran the same offensive story (13 April 2004) claiming “Each year, more than 200,000 Nigerian children are forcibly taken from their homes to be put to work. Some go with the permission of their parents”