OHCHR announces the re-opening of its call for contributions to the crowd-sourced Romani Memory Map in the Americas. In April 2024, on the occasion of the International Roma Day, the first edition of the Map was published, featuring 29 entries from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, and the United States. In April 2025, the Romani Memory Map for the Americas was released for the second time, adding 21 new entries from Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the United States.

The third edition of the Map will be released in April 2026. This new phase will prioritize the inclusion of countries not yet represented, while also broadening the scope of memory sites to be documented.

The map is developed jointly with Gonzaga University, USA; Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czechia; Prague Center for Romani Histories, Czechia; Institute of Anthropological Sciences at University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Laboratório de Estudos sobre Etnicidade (LEER/Universidade de São Paulo), Brazil; Associação Internacional Maylê Sara Kali (AMSK) and Kalo Chiriklo - Collective Against Antigypsyism.

Click here to view the map in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Background

The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence has dedicated increasing attention to questions of memorialization, in which he observed:

“… 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 fulfills the legal obligation of States to guarantee human rights.”

Antigypsyism has contributed to the erasure of the history of Romani people from public spaces and their misrepresentation in collective memory. This phenomenon has had a strong negative impact on the human rights of Roma. In September 2022 and May 2023, OHCHR convened a global meeting on Roma and memorialization, as well as a follow-up meeting on Memorialization as a Strategy to Tackle Antigypsyism in the Americas. In 2024, OHCHR carried out several initiatives as part of the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the Romani Holocaust. These efforts enabled the participation of a delegation of activists from the Americas as part of the annual commemoration held in Auschwitz on August 2, as well as their visits to other concentration camps in the Czech Republic. These also supported dialogue between state representatives and Roma organizations. Moreover, these initiatives contributed to expanding discussions on the Romani Holocaust across several countries in the Americas.

Learn more about OHCHR’s work on Roma rights