{"id":29676,"date":"2025-07-30T05:22:50","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T09:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=29676"},"modified":"2025-07-30T05:22:50","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T09:22:50","slug":"us-grammy-winner-ciara-becomes-citizen-of-benin-under-new-slavery-descendants-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2025\/07\/30\/us-grammy-winner-ciara-becomes-citizen-of-benin-under-new-slavery-descendants-law\/","title":{"rendered":"US Grammy winner Ciara becomes citizen of Benin under new slavery descendants law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US singer Ciara has become one of the first public figures to be granted citizenship of Benin, under a new law offering nationality to the descendants of slaves.<\/b><\/p>\n

In an Instagram post the Grammy award-winner said she was “honoured”, adding “thank you Benin for opening your arms and your heart to me”.<\/p>\n

The citizenship scheme is part of an initiative by the small West African country to build ties with the African diaspora and boost cultural tourism.<\/p>\n

Ciara, known for R&B and pop hits such as Goodies and 1,2 Step, officially became a citizen at a ceremony in the city of Cotonou.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“This act, which is symbolic, humane and historic, is not merely an administrative gesture. It is a gesture of the soul, a return to one’s roots, a hand extended to those whom history, in its brutality, had torn from this land,” the government said in a statement on Monday, following the ceremony.<\/p>\n

By enacting the My Afro Origins Law last year, Benin joined countries like Ghana and Guinea-Bissau in offering citizenship to people with an African ancestor who was taken from their homeland as part of the transatlantic slave trade.<\/p>\n

Descendants can apply to become a citizen via a\u00a0recently launched website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Just last week, Benin\u00a0appointed renowned American filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee, a seasoned producer and author, as its ambassadors for African-Americans in the US<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Benin’s coastline is part of what was once known as the Slave Coast – a major departure point for enslaved Africans shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas.<\/p>\n

Between 1580 and 1727, the Kingdom of Whydah, a major slave-trading centre located on what is now Benin’s coast, is estimated to have exported more than a million Africans to the US, the Caribbean and Brazil.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US singer Ciara has become one of the first public figures to be granted citizenship of Benin, under a new law offering nationality to the descendants of slaves. In an Instagram post the Grammy award-winner […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,6],"tags":[11510,11512,842,11511,11514,11513],"class_list":{"0":"post-29676","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"category-world","10":"tag-benin","11":"tag-ciara","12":"tag-citizenship","13":"tag-cotonou","14":"tag-kingdom-of-whydah","15":"tag-my-afro-origins-law","16":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29678,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29676\/revisions\/29678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}