On Wednesday, 25 March 2026 at 10:00 a.m. EDT, the United Nations General Assembly will convene its annual plenary meeting to commemorate the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Speakers will include the President of the 80th Session of the General Assembly, Her Excellency Annalena Baerbock; the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. António Guterres; a keynote address from Barbados Poet Laureate Ms. Esther Phillips; Toronto’s first Youth Poet Laureate Ms. Shahaddah Jack; regional groups and representatives of Member States.
Exhibit A History Exposed: The Enslavement of Black People in Canada on display at UNHQ from 18 March – 20 April 2026
 Photo: Niharika Singh The exhibition reveals more than two centuries of slavery in Canada under French and British colonial rule, examining the country’s involvement in the enslavement and trade of Africans within the larger system of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This is Canada’s first national exhibition dedicated to the history of slavery. Created by the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in partnership with guest curator Dr. Afua Cooper and the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia, the exhibition was inaugurated in 2024 and is scheduled to travel to nearly 20 locations across Canada through 2029. Its presentation at the United Nations in New York marks its first international appearance. If you are in New York and wish to visit the exhibition please register HERE to access the UN complex. |
On March 25, 2026, in observance of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, The Middle Passage Ceremonies and Port Markers Project (MPCPMP) will share a recorded conversation with Professor Paul Lovejoy and MPCPMP Advisory Board member Professor Corey Walker. The subject of the discussion is Lovejoy’s soon-to-be-published book about Olaudah Equiano aka Gustavus Vassa, entitled Olaudah of Ikwuano: The True Origins of an African Abolitionist (1742 – 1766).
Lovejoy’s work is a culmination of decades of his research on Equiano, who wrote in the first person about his African home, his capture, his Middle Passage voyage, his arrival and enslavement in the Americas, and his manumission and advocacy for abolition. During the interview, Lovejoy describes the many challenges related to Middle Passage research.
Please join us to view this detailed and enlightening conversation with:Paul E. Lovejoy FRSC, Distinguished Research Professor (Emeritus), Department of History at York University; andCorey Walker, Dean of School of Divinity and Professor of Humanities at Wake Forest University and member of the MPCPMP Advisory Board.
About the speaker
As Distinguished Research Professor the Department of History, York University, Paul E. Lovejoy FRSC was Founding Director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on Africa and its Diasporas at York University and held the Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History (2000-2015). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and was a member of Council of the Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, serving as Vice President and Acting President. He was a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO “Slave Route” Project from 1996 to 2012, publishing several books in association with the Project. He was co-editor of the journal, African Economic History, for 37 years and continues as General Editor of The Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora (Africa World Press), having published 40 books in the Series. In 2019, the Journal of Global Slavery and Brill Publishers established the Paul E. Lovejoy Prize, an Annual Award for Excellence and Originality in a Major Work on Global Slavery. In 2021, African Economic History published a special issue in his honor (Vol, 49, No. 1), and in 2024, Toyin Falola published Transformations in History: African Societies and Economies in The Works of Paul Lovejoy (Berlin and Leiden: De Gruyter Brill). He also received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Extraordinary Global Academic Leadership from Obafemi Awolowo University *the Distinguished Africanist Award of the African Studies Association in 2024. Lovejoy has published more than forty books, including Jihad in West Africa during the Age of Revolutions (1775-1850) (2016), Slavery in the Global Diaspora of Africa (2019), Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua: An Enslaved Muslim of the Black Atlantic (2025), and Ecología, etnografía y comercio musulmán a través del Sahel: interacciones entre el Sahara, la sabana y el bosque en África Occidental (2025). He has co-edited Slavery, Resistance and Abolitions: A Pluralist Perspective (2019), The Atlantic and Africa: The Second Slavery and Beyond (2021), Regenerated Identities: Documenting African Lives (2022), and Boko Haram, Islamic Protest and National Security (2023). His various web-based projects include Equiano’s World: Gustavus Vassa and the Abolition of the Slave Trade (www.equianosworld.org), which is the subject of his current research. His forthcoming book, Olaudah of Ikwuano: The True Origins of an African Abolitionist is with Princeton University Press.
