Barbados’ CARICOM Ambassador uses the Fifth Session of the UN Permanent Forum to indict the West’s silence on slavery, defend multilateralism, and call for a unifying agenda for Global Africa.

GENEVA — Fifty-five predominantly white nations either voted against or abstained when the United Nations General Assembly moved to declare the trafficking of enslaved Africans the gravest crime against humanity. On Tuesday, at the Palais des Nations, Barbados’ Ambassador to CARICOM, David Comissiong, refused to let that vote pass in silence. Addressing the Fifth Session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, he delivered not a plea, but an indictment — and a programme.