Geneva, Switzerland - Countries are legally obliged to provide broad reparations for harms resulting from both direct and indirect involvement in the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people, a United Nations committee said Monday.

Issuing a fresh interpretation of an important international rights treaty, the UN watchdog said the accord obliges countries to work to redress the harms caused by slavery and the continuing consequences.

"States parties must implement comprehensive reparatory measures for people of African descent, covering all aspects of remedies," the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) said in its findings, presented in a document entitled General Recommendation-40.

It stressed that reparatory justice combined "a wide range of measures conceived as monetary, non-monetary and structural."

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The document, which was approved last week but only published on Monday, is expected to provide a powerful new tool supporting reparations claims.

This is "a watershed moment," committee member Pela Boker-Wilson told AFP.

The CERD panel is composed of 18 independent rights experts.

Tasked with monitoring implementation of the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, it provided a fresh interpretation of the treaty's obligations.

The convention counts 182 countries as parties, including the US, Britain, France, Portugal, and other nations that were heavily involved in the transatlantic trafficking of African people from the 16th to 19th century.

In many of those same countries, Black people continue to face discrimination, violence, and economic hardship today.

"Confronting historical injustice cannot be separated from the fight against present-day racial discrimination," Boker-Wilson said.

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The Liberian human rights lawyer maintained that the committee's finding brought about "a paradigm shift" in the framing of reparatory justice from a simple historical responsibility to a present-day legal obligation.

It clarifies that countries are required to take "active measures that are geared towards restoring the dignity, the justice, and equality that people of African descent deserve."

While the CERD's findings are not legally binding, Boker-Wilson stressed that they carry "significant authoritative weight," and could be used by officials to inform judicial review, by courts as an interpretative tool, as well as to support litigation.

The fresh analysis comes after the UN General Assembly in March adopted a landmark resolution recognizing transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of African people as "the gravest crime against humanity," despite opposition from the US and some European countries.

Boker-Wilson said the US and other countries should "welcome" the new findings, noting that the last review of US adherence to the convention on discrimination, in 2022, had found issues with racial profiling and disparities in the criminal justice system. The committee at that time called for the creation of a federal reparations commission to address the harms.

While the campaign around reparatory justice has been heavily focused on the US, Boker-Wilson stressed that "it's a global initiative."

Transatlantic enslavement "distorted global economic relations by distributing unjustly accumulated wealth across societies and borders, creating shared responsibility for its enduring effects," the document points out.

Beyond monetary compensation, the required reparations encompass everything from restitution to rehabilitation and memorialization.

And it pointed to an educational obligation "to investigate and disclose the full truth about transatlantic chattel slavery."