STUDENTS CONNECTED VIA VIDEO CONFERENCE 25 MARCH AT UNITED NATIONS HEADQUARTERS

TO MARK DAY OF REMEMBRANCE OF VICTIMS OF SLAVERY AND TRANSATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

Students from Canada, Sierra Leone, Saint Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago joined several schools and organizations from New York City and Connecticut at United Nations Headquarters to observe the International Day of the Remembrance of Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, organized by the United Nations Department of Public Information on Wednesday, 25 March.  The students were connected via video conference to discuss the legacy of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade under the theme “Breaking the Silence, Beating the Drum”.

Student video conferences are organized at United Nations Headquarters by the Education Outreach Cluster of the Outreach Division of the Department of Public Information to reach out to students around the world, and to facilitate an exchange of views on United Nations priority issues.  The student activities are an integral part of the Department of Public Information’s educational outreach activities.

Welcoming the students, Ramu Damodaran, Deputy-Director of the Outreach Division said “it is important to break the silence on this major chapter in the history of humanity.  Its legacy of racism and prejudice needs to be acknowledged and discussed.”  He expressed the hope that the students would share what they learned with their families, schools and communities.  It was important to prevent such gross violations of human rights from happening again, he said.

Participants in the student video conference from Halifax, Nova Scotia, told of the history of the “Black Loyalist” movement, which resulted in the establishment of 33 different communities of descendants of Africans in the region during the eighteenth century, and which still influenced their lives.  They also told the audience about Black Loyalists who travelled the reverse route across the Atlantic to Sierra Leone and founded the capital city of Freetown.

Students in Sierra Leone shared aspects of their country’s history in connection with the transatlantic slave trade, and said that the Day honoured those who died, and helped everyone to remember the struggle for freedom from enslavement. It was especially important to instruct future generations of the causes, consequences and lessons of the transatlantic slave trade, as it had been one of the worst violations of human rights in the history of humanity, they said.

The Caribbean island of Saint Lucia had received hundreds of thousands of slaves from West Africa and therefore is now an integral part of the African diaspora.  The country had evolved into a society of “strong West African colour and flavour, overlaid by European language and political and social structures”.  It has also developed its own traditions.

Joining the video conference from Trincity in Trinidad and Tobago, the Bishop Anstey High School East and Trinity College East gave an historical overview of the emergence of drums and drumming in the country entitled “Drums of Resistance”.  The historical perspective was presented in the forms of poetry, music, dance and drama, accompanied by drums, including the steel drum, the only new instrument developed in the twentieth century.

Students from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who were gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York, re-enacted an excerpt of Maafa, a dramatization of the enslavement of Africans over a 500-year period.

During a question-and-answer session between the audience in New York and the video conferencing sites, students discussed the connections between the United States, the Caribbean, Canada and Sierra Leone, and how slavery and the transatlantic slave trade still influenced their lives, as well as how their multi-racial societies today are uniting and growing closer, despite differences in ethnicity.

The event was moderated by Captain William “Bill” Pinkney, who was the first African-American to sail solo around the world, and who in 1998 went on a historic voyage to retrace the “Middle Passage”.  He said that the transatlantic slave trade was a major element in global history and that it marked a decline in the West African population, and led to economic and agricultural development in the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas.

The student conference was one of many events that were organized at United Nations Headquarters to remember the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade.  This Remembrance provides an opportunity to acknowledge the tragedy that for years has remained hidden or unrecognized, and to examine the causes, consequences and legacy of the 400-year slave trade.

The student conference was webcast live on the United Nations website at www.un.org/webcast.

For more information on student conferences, please visit http://www.cyberschoolbus.un.org, or you may contact Yvonne Acosta at acostay@un.org, and Bill Yotive at yotive@un.org. 

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For information media • not an official record