Descendants of United States Chattel SlaveryTM are the specific descendants of people subjected to racialized chattel slavery as codified and enforced within the United States. We are not the African diaspora broadly. We are not represented by the African Union or covered by international reparations frameworks designed for other populations. We are a legally distinct group with specific, documentable harm.
The African Union reparations framework addresses the transatlantic slave trade and its impact on African nations and the Caribbean. DUSCSTM addresses the specific domestic chattel slavery system that operated within the United States from 1662 to 1865 and its continuing harms. These are distinct historical and legal systems requiring distinct remedies.
Partus sequitur ventrem is a legal doctrine established in Virginia in 1662 that made slavery hereditary through the maternal body. It was never abolished by name in U.S. law. Its logic persists today through child welfare systems that separate Black families at double the rate of white families.
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as punishment for crime. This exception clause permits involuntary servitude today. Black men are incarcerated at 5.6 times the rate of white men and forced to work in prison for wages from zero to less than one dollar per hour. This is the 13th Amendment exception in operation.
H.R. 40 is the Commission to Study the Impact of the Institution of Slavery on African Americans and Provide Recommendations for a National Commission on Reparations. It has been pending in Congress for 37 years without a floor vote. It represents the ongoing failure of the U.S. government to provide domestic remedy for DUSCSTM harms.
Because there is no domestic remedy. Every court that has received a DUSCSTM reparations claim has dismissed it without reaching the merits. The U.S. has made clear it will not provide remedy domestically. International pressure through UN forums is our mechanism for accountability.
On March 25, 2026, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution A/80/L.48, declaring the transatlantic slave trade "the gravest crime against humanity" and calling for reparations. The United States, Argentina, and Israel voted against it. Fifty-two countries abstained. One hundred twenty-three countries voted yes.
The U.S. formally declared it does not recognize a legal right to reparations for slavery. This declaration applies to all populations, but DUSCSTM filed to establish that this refusal specifically harms us as a distinct group.
Download our community filing template from the Downloads page. Follow the instructions, add your personal testimony, and submit it to ohchr-ccpr@un.org. Your submission strengthens our collective case on the international record.
We continue filing across all relevant UN forums. We build the international record. We flood the zone with DUSCSTM voices. We demand that the U.S. government answer for its refusal to remedy the harms it created.