A/HRC/58/34 36. In Brazil, the Mechanism noted some positive practices to guarantee the human rights of people of African descent, but reported testimonies of extrajudicial killings by police, a pattern of false evidence to incriminate victims and justify the killings, and threats, intimidation, reprisals and stigmatization faced by them. In Italy, the Mechanism found that racism led to a prevalent presumption of criminality towards foreigners and persons perceived as such based on their ethnic, religious or linguistic background, particularly towards Africans and persons of African descent. Those biases contributed to racial profiling by law enforcement officials and to the disproportionate representation of people of foreign origin, especially Africans, within the Italian criminal justice system. 37. In October, the High Commissioner presented to the Human Rights Council a report on the promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers through transformative change for racial justice and equality.27 In the report, the High Commissioner presented key elements of intersectionality as an essential framework to combat systemic racism and confront the legacies of enslavement and colonialism. The High Commissioner concluded that a holistic application of the intersectionality framework could be a game changer and called upon States to adopt multi-pronged approaches towards its implementation. E. Human rights of Roma communities 38. OHCHR continued efforts to advance the rights of Roma communities worldwide, with a particular focus on addressing the phenomenon of “anti-Gypsyism”. On International Roma Day, on 8 April, OHCHR, together with a coalition of partners, launched the Romani Memory Map for the Americas, 28 a crowd-sourced initiative mapping places of memory relevant to Romani history or culture. The Romani Memory Map for the Americas builds on the work of OHCHR on memorialization, as a strategy to tackle anti-Gypsyism in the Americas. 39. In July and August, OHCHR, together with the Government of Brazil, supported a mission by Romani human rights defenders from the Americas to attend commemorative events at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on the eightieth anniversary of the Roma Holocaust and to undertake a study visit to sites of Romani memory and State institutions in Czechia. Seven Romani human rights defenders from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia and the United States of America took part. 40. In April, in its concluding observations on the combined twelfth to fourteenth periodic reports on the Republic of Moldova, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed concern at the low attendance and high dropout rates at all levels of education among Roma children, the high rates of unemployment among Roma, the low rates of coverage of Roma by the compulsory health insurance scheme, the inadequate resources allocated for the implementation of the Programme to Support the Ethnic Roma Population (2022–2025), the prevalence of hate speech and hate crimes and the dissemination of negative stereotypes against the Roma. The Committee recommended that the Republic of Moldova implement the Programme effectively in due course and strengthen its efforts to ensure Roma children’s access to quality and inclusive education, as well as non-discriminatory opportunities for healthcare services and employment for Roma, and combat racial discrimination, racist hate speech and hate crimes. 29 41. In the Republic of Moldova, OHCHR continued to support the Roma community mediators system launched in the Transnistrian region in 2020. In 2024, over a thousand marginalized Roma living in six localities across the region were supported in accessing education, social protection, healthcare, employment, housing, identity documents and other human rights. With the support of OHCHR, Roma community activists, jointly with the mediators, advocated with the de facto authorities of the Transnistrian region to adopt 27 28 29 GE.25-00006 A/HRC/57/67. See www.ohchr.org/en/minorities/advancing-roma-inclusion. CERD/C/MDA/CO/12-14, paras. 17 (b), 23 and 24. 9