The legacy of the enslavement of tens of millions of Africans continues to deny people of African descent opportunity and equality, the UN human rights chief said, calling on states to deliver reparatory justice.

Volker Türk made the remarks at a high-level dialogue convened in Geneva by the UN human rights office. The meeting brought together states, experts and partners working on reparatory justice, including civil society organisations.

Türk described the trade in enslaved Africans as a systematic regime of subjugation and oppression that treated tens of millions of people as commodities. Its consequences, and those of colonialism more broadly, still shape who has access to opportunity, security and power, he said. He also warned that artificial intelligence and other technologies replicate human bias and could deepen systemic racism if left unchecked.

He acknowledged steps taken by some countries. Belgium, Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands have issued apologies, while Colombia, Mexico, Portugal and others have launched remembrance projects. Earlier this year, Pope Leo XIV apologised for the Catholic Church's role in legitimising slavery. Yet no state has fully accepted accountability for past harms or present-day systemic racism, Türk said, and fewer than a quarter of countries have comprehensive anti-discrimination laws.

Reparations, he stressed, go beyond financial compensation to include rehabilitation, formal apologies, truth-telling and guarantees of non-repetition such as legal reform and history education. He noted that many developing countries, often former colonies, remain weighed down by debt.

More than 30 million people were uprooted from Africa to be enslaved. Under the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, states recognised slavery and the slave trade as a crime against humanity.