French PM ruled out Slavery Reparations in West Africa

French PM Manuel Valls has ruled out the reparations for slavery in an article published as he toured three west African countries. Valls called instead for a students’ exchange program between Europe and Africa and a “memory that is shared and at peace”. Slavery was a “disaster on a grand scale”, he wrote, a “crime against humanity” as “France has fully acknowledged” in a law passed in 2001. But “memory should not divide. It should, on the contrary, close fractures and bring people together,” he went on, citing black anti-colonial writers Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire to argue that slavery was “irreparable” and thus rule out financial reparations by the West.