Conference on Arab-Led Slavery of Africans in Johannesburg (22nd February 2003)
 
Following on the Platform of CASAS held in the context of the NGO Meeting (Durban), and by way of implementing  the Declaration of Plan of Action of the UN World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discriminiation, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) Durban, 2001, CASAS and the Drammeh Institute organized a Conference on Arab-Led Slavery of Africans in Johannesburg (22nd  February 2003). 
 
The initiative for the conference was advised by the fact that whereas, relatively much more is known about the European-led Atlantic Slave trade, the history and reality of Arab-led slavery of Africans continues to be an area of silence and darkness in African and non-African perceptions of African society and history. The painful reality of this history is profoundly aggravated by the fact that, slavery continues to the present day in the Afro-Arab borderlands (this area encompasses the broad stretch of Africa running roughly between the 30th degree latitude and the 10th degree latitude across the Africa continent), particularly in Mauritania and Sudan., The conference was intended to provide, for wider consumption, studies, by scholars, on the subject of Arab-led slavery of Africans. At the close of the conference, the meeting produced the following declaration:
 
On this day, this 22nd of February 2003, we the participants  of this conference on Arab-led slavery of Africans, do solemnly make this declaration that, we the people, Africans and African descendants, herein referred to as Africans, striving for the unity of the African Nation, intend to reclaim our voice, and speak for ourselves on the above and related issues, after centuries of silence and non-self-expression. 
 
We attest to the fact that, the African continent and people has served as a millennia-long reservoir for uncompensated labour obtained through brutal and dehumanizing processes for the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean areas and trade routes. Arising out of these labour extraction processes, in the form of slavery, Africans have historically become people whose slavery amongst all others had, for centuries, assumed intercontinental forms. In this context: 
 
WE CONDEMN, in the strongest possible terms, all forms of slavery, historical and contemporary, in all parts of the world. 
 
WE RECOGNISE, that the Arab-led slave trade of African people predates the trans-Atlantic slave trade by a millennium, and represents the largest and, in time, longest involuntary removal of any indigenous people in the history of humanity. 
 
WE RECOGNISE, the need to combat and eliminate the collective amnesia about Arab enslavement of Africans. In this respect, more research needs to be conducted on the subject of the Arab and Ottoman slave trade of Africans. More workshops need to be undertaken which will facilitate  the conscientization of people in Africa and the wider world. Academics and scholars of African descent are called upon to play an active role in this. 
 
WE ACKNOWLEDGE the need to mobilize structures, worldwide, for the elimination and banning of slave practices in the world.  
 
WE DEMAND that the issue of contemporary slavery of Africans in the Afro-Arab borderlands be placed before the African Union (AU).
 
 WE DECRY the impact of African slavery on Africans and its effects towards the cultural denationalization of Africans. 
 
WE ACKNWOLEDGE the need to establish relations between continental Africans and the African Diaspora in the Arab world. 
 
WE CONDEMN, in the strongest possible terms, the practice of forced concubinage of enslaved women, and the use of enslaved women for the purpose of breeding children who become and continue to be property held by Arab masters.
 
 
WE CONDEMN in the strongest possible terms the collaborationist role of some Africans in this trade. 
 
WE ACCUSE Arab societies, for historical and continuing crimes committed against African boys subjected to forced castration (of which the survival rate has been one in ten), to create a eunuch class. 
 
WE ACCUSE Arab societies, for the historical and continued taking into slavery of young girls to serve as slaves to their masters with no right to marriage unless prescribed by their masters. 
 
WE ACCUSE Arab societies, in some areas of the Afro-Arab borderlands, of genocide against Africans, particularly in the Sudan. 
 
WE CHARGE the responsible Arab societies of ethnocide of African people through forced cultural Arabization processes. 
 
GIVEN THE FACT that the millennia-long Arab-led slavery of Africans has wreaked incalculable damage on Africans and African society, apologies and reparations are due to Africans. 
 
WE CALL for a civilization dialogue between the Arab and African peoples.




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