The University of Liverpool's Dr Leona Vaughn has played a key role in a major UNESCO initiative addressing racism, discrimination and reparatory justice, work which has now been highlighted at a global forum in The Hague.
Dr Vaughn spoke at the fifth UNESCO Global Forum against Racism and Discrimination, on 29 October, having also moderated the fourth UNESCO Global Dialogue for Reparatory Justice.
She has represented the higher education sector in UNESCO's dialogues on reparatory justice since 2025, helping to bring academic perspectives to international discussions about addressing the legacies and continuing impacts of racial slavery.
In summer 2026, Dr Vaughn was commissioned by UNESCO to lead a team of researchers in developing a framework for a future global toolkit to support dialogues on reparatory justice.
The framework was recognised at both the fourth Global Dialogue and the fifth Global Forum as an important step towards advancing this work.
During the Global Forum, Dr Vaughn also met His Majesty King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands to discuss the framework and its potential contribution to UNESCO's international work on reparatory justice.
Dr Vaughn said: "It was a privilege to lead a small team of researchers in the development of a UNESCO framework for a future toolkit for dialogues for reparatory justice. The hope is that this framework can support resource mobilisation globally to provide communities of African descent, sectoral stakeholders and member states with the information and guidance they need to respond to the United Nations General Assembly resolution and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommendation this year and begin sectoral, national or regional dialogues on legacies of racial slavery and reparatory justice."
Dr Vaughn is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law and Social Justice and Derby Research Fellow for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Research Theme of 'Slavery & Unfree Labour'. She is Co-Lead for Decolonial Research with the Centre for Studying International Slavery (CSIS), developing anticolonial research approaches to research.
Leona's expertise is in social policy areas of 'risk', 'harm', 'prevention' and 'repair'. She has a longstanding professional background in equality and human rights and was the global lead for Vulnerable Populations research at the Finance Against Slavery & Trafficking (FAST) initiative, United Nations University Centre for Policy Research in New York, 2021-2024.
