Three Brazilian places join UNESCO's network of slavery memory sites

2 November 2026

UNESCO has added Valongo Wharf, the Sociedade Protetora dos Desvalidos and Serra da Barriga to its Network of Historic and Memorial Sites Related to Slavery and the Slave Trade. Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Affairs put in the application and welcomed the listing in a press release. Valongo Wharf, in the port area of Rio de Janeiro, keeps the remains of one of the main landing points for enslaved Africans in the Americas and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2017. The Sociedade Protetora dos Desvalidos in Salvador, Bahia, was founded in 1832 by Manoel Victor Serra and other free black men and is Brazil's first black civil institution to have run without a break. Serra da Barriga, in Uniao dos Palmares in Alagoas, holds the Quilombo dos Palmares Memorial Park and has been a national heritage site since 1988. The Network was set up in 2024 under UNESCO's Routes of the Enslaved: Resistance, Freedom, and Heritage initiative. Brazilian sites already on it include the Museu da Inconfidencia in Minas Gerais.