Интеграция рома

80^th Anniversary of the Roma Holocaust Commemoration Year

Launch Announcement

Romani Memory Map in the Americas

11 April 2025

Today, on the occasion of International Roma Day 2024, a coalition of partners launched the Romani Memory Map for the Americas. The Romani Memory Map for the Americas is a crowd-sourced initiative mapping Romani community memory points. The Map is available on the following links:

• English-language version
• Portuguese-language version
• Spanish-language version

The Romani Memory Map for the Americas is a collective, crowd-sourced initiative led by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in partnership with Gonzaga University, the Laboratory of Studies on Ethnicity, Racism, and Discrimination (LEER) at the University of São Paulo (Brazil), the Institute of Ethnology at the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Anthropological Sciences at University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Associação Internacional Maylê Sara Kali (AMSK/Brazil) alongside Romani human rights defenders and civil society organizations from the Americas and beyond.

Background

The Romani Memory Map for the Americas builds on OHCHR’s work on memorialization and antigypsyism, and was a specific commitment of the May 2023 roundtable on memorialization as a strategy to tackle antigypsyism in the Americas. OHCHR’s work on Roma rights – including addressing antigypsyism, the specific form of racism facing Roma -- is underpinned by the 2015 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues. This work also builds on the insights of the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, who noted, in a 2020 report:

“… the crucial role played by memorialization processes in the context of transitional justice, which is fully recognized by the rules and standards of contemporary international law. The work carried out on these past violations serves as a basis for reflection on the present and identification of contemporary issues related to exclusion, discrimination, marginalization and abuses of power, which are often linked to toxic political cultures. Positive work in the area of memory not only helps to build democratic cultures in which human rights are respected but also fulfils the legal obligation of States to guarantee human rights.”

Process

In July 2023 and April 2024,  calls for inputs to the Romani Memory Map for the Americas were launched.

Two independent review bodies – an Expert Panel and a Review Board -- involving Roma human rights defenders from the Americas and academic institutions have been convened to review the materials submitted in response to the call for inputs.  The review bodies carried out detailed consultations, assessing inputs and carefully vetting materials according to criteria including appropriateness, historical accuracy, to ensure a human rights-basis and to review according to the principle of do-no-harm.

On the basis of these review processes, 50 Romani Memory Points from throughout the Americas have been included in the first and second iterations of the Map. A full process summary is available at link.

Note on terminology

Disclaimer

Contacts

Inquiries please to: [email protected] and/or [email protected].

Roundtable

Memorialization as a Strategy to Tackle Anti-Gypsyism in the Americas

17-18 May 2023
UPEACE, Costa Rica

The Indigenous Peoples and Minorities Section (IPMS) of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the University for Peace (UPEACE)  organized the international roundtable event on "Memorialization as a Strategy to tackle Anti-Gypsyism in the Americas" on May 17-18, 2023. 

The roundtable was done with the involvement of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and in partnership with civil society organizations.

The roundtable  followed up on the UN's global efforts to consolidate the rights of Roma people and combat antigypsyism, its historical roots and its impact on the present. The event also aims to take stock of the current state of Roma inclusion policies in the Americas and to encourage the processes of construction and valorization of the memory of this people in public and private spaces.