A commemorative ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Taubira Act

This Sunday, May 10, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., the Prefecture is organizing a ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary of the Taubira Law coming into effect at Fort Gustav III, in front of the plaque commemorating the abolition of slavery, under the kapok tree. Since 2006, May 10 has been designated as “National Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade, Slavery, and Their Abolition.”

France was the first country to designate the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. This was largely due to the determination of one woman, Christiane Taubira. In 2001, while serving as a member of parliament for French Guiana’s first district, she was the National Assembly’s rapporteur for the bill seeking to recognize the slave trade and slavery as crimes against humanity. Adopted by Parliament on May 10, 2001, the law was enacted on May 21.

In her initial bill, Christiane Taubira had proposed adopting February 8 as the official date, in reference to the Vienna Congress’s condemnation of the transatlantic slave trade as “repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality” on February 8, 1815. However, this proposal did not achieve consensus. A committee, chaired by the writer Maryse Condé, was then created to determine a date that would achieve unanimous support. The problem was that the decree abolishing slavery on April 27, 1848, reached the French overseas territories on different dates. Consequently, the day the Taubira Act was adopted—May 10—was ultimately chosen to establish the National Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade, Slavery, and Their Abolition.
In 2017, the law on genuine equality in overseas territories established May 23 as “National Day in Tribute to the Victims of Colonial Slavery.”

In Saint Barthélemy, it was not France but Sweden (which was then the occupying power) that abolished slavery on October 9, 1847. The other French overseas territories commemorate abolition on the dates corresponding to its official enactment: April 27 in Mayotte, May 22 in Martinique, May 27 in Guadeloupe and Saint Martin, June 10 in French Guiana, and December 20 in Réunion.