Justicia Shipena
Namibia has called for the crimes of colonialism in Africa to be formally recognised under international law.
The government says justice and reparations are long overdue.
The appeal was delivered by international relations and trade minister Selma Ashipala-Musavyi during the International Conference on the Crimes of Colonialism in Africa on Sunday.
The conference is taking place in Algiers, Algeria, under the theme Towards Redressing Historical Injustices Through the Criminalisation of Colonialism.
Ashipala-Musavyi said the meeting carries symbolic significance because Algeria has long been a pillar of anti-colonial solidarity. She said Namibia’s own history of resistance to colonial rule has shaped its advocacy for justice and for the rights of people still living under occupation.
She said Namibia’s own history demonstrates the scale of colonial violence. She referenced the 1904–1908 genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama community.
About 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama population were exterminated through systematic killing, displacement and deprivation by German colonial forces.
She said land seizures stripped communities of their most productive territory, and the economic losses remain visible across the country. She added that the psychological wounds of the genocide, including intergenerational trauma, remain deeply embedded.
Her remarks come as a court case before the High Court challenges the 2021 joint declaration between Namibia and Germany on the genocide. The declaration states that Germany acknowledges the 1904–1908 killings as genocide from a current historical perspective. In the agreement, Germany commits to providing €1.1 billion (about N$21.9 billion) over 30 years for development and reconstruction projects.
Ashipala-Musavyi said African calls for reparations are not new but rooted in decades of documented suffering. She told the conference that African communities recorded the brutality of colonialism so future generations could understand their suffering and demand recognition.
She warned that international legal systems still fail to acknowledge the structural crimes of colonialism. She said international law, including frameworks for genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes against peace and war crimes, has historically excluded colonial-era atrocities, treating them as distant or irrelevant.
She said this has created a “glaring and unacceptable accountability gap” that protects former colonial powers from responsibility.
She called on African states, scholars and the Global South to help shape legal norms that define colonial crimes and demand appropriate remedies.
“There is no humane colonialism,” she said, adding that African countries must speak and act in unison if they hope to make colonialism a recognised crime under international law.
Ashipala-Musavyi said Namibia believes that international law must confront colonial legacies directly if it seeks to uphold universality, justice and equality.
The conference follows an African Union summit decision adopted in February 2025.
It brings together ministers, jurists, historians, academics and experts from Africa, the Caribbean and other parts of the world to build a unified African position on historical justice, reparations, restitution of heritage and the preservation of collective memory.
Its sessions focus on human, cultural, economic, environmental and legal dimensions of colonial crimes, including intergenerational trauma, dispossession, the destruction of African cultural heritage, exploitation of resources and inequitable economic models inherited from colonial rule.
The conference will also highlight environmental impacts, including nuclear tests carried out on African populations, and explore legal pathways to strengthen the criminalisation of colonialism and establish a permanent African mechanism for reparations and restitution.
One of the main expected outcomes is the adoption of the “Algiers Declaration”, which is set to become a continental reference for defining colonial crimes, recognising their impacts and guiding an African strategy for justice and reparations. The declaration will be submitted to the AU Summit in February 2026 for review and adoption.
