When I read this, I couldn’t help but notice something. This stance may appear principled on the surface, but a deeper look reveals that the argument is not against hierarchy in general – it is against being held accountable for the one that already exists. If creating a hierarchy of atrocities is wrong, why does one already exist?

What I find unsettling is that the Rome Statute, the international treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002, has already created a structured framework regarding international crimes. These include genocide, crimes against humanity (murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation or forcible transfer of population), war crimes and the crime of aggression.

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The statute was signed and ratified by the European nations that chose to abstain. However, although the US initially signed the Rome Statute, the treaty was never ratified.

Hierarchy in international law is not new or controversial. It is the foundation upon which the ICC was built, shaped precisely to make sure that the severe crimes do not go unpunished. To me, the opposition’s argument falls apart the moment you place it next to the document they already signed.

And if the signed documents aren’t enough, watch the money talk. Since 1952, the German government has paid approximately $95bn in indemnification to survivors of the Holocaust, according to the Claims Conference, which has worked to gain compensation for survivors since 1951.

Last year, the Claims Conference obtained more than $1bn in funding for home care services for survivors worldwide, marking the largest social welfare and home care budget in the organisation’s history.

What troubles me the most is that, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium, all active participants in Holocaust reparations, funding memorials, restoring looted artwork and maintaining Jewish cemeteries across Europe, were among the 27 EU states that abstained from the slavery resolution.

In 1825, surrounded by French gunboats, a newly independent Haiti was forced to compensate its former slaveholders with 150 million francs for the loss of its colony and enslaving labour force. Ninety years later, in 1914, more than three-quarters of Haiti’s national budget was still being drained to pay off its debts to French banks. It wasn’t until 1947 that Haiti finally settled its debt.

France, one of the nations that abstained from the voting on the UN resolution on 25 March, has still not provided financial reparations to Haiti in return.

By contrast, reparations connected to the Holocaust began within seven years of the end of World War II. The gap speaks for itself.

Some may argue that, unlike the Holocaust, the transatlantic slave trade involves multiple states over several centuries, making reparations significantly more complex. However, complexity doesn’t make the issue insignificant.