Twenty-six years after Minas Gerais enacted a law creating a Human Rights Memorial in the building that housed the state’s Department of Political and Social Order (DOPS), a political police body central to dictatorship-era repression, the site has still not been officially converted into the memorial the law envisaged. In November 2025, the Federal Public Prosecutor filed a civil suit against Minas Gerais and the Federal Government seeking the Memorial’s definitive installation. A dispute that might appear local has now become a useful test of the content of guarantees of non-recurrence under international law.
On 22 December 2025, three United Nations mandates, concerning truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence, cultural rights, and enforced or involuntary disappearances, sent Brazil a joint Communication concerning the alleged failure to implement the law and alleged attempts to suppress contemporary civil society activities at the former DOPS. In February 2026, Brazil responded, describing federal initiatives on memory, archives, and the mapping of fifty former sites in which human rights violations were committed by Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985). On the core questions, however, Brazil’s response stated that explanations about that particular site depended on information from the government of Minas Gerais, which had not yet replied to the federal government’s request for clarification.
The exchange exposes a recurrent conceptual problem. Non-recurrence is often presented as a portfolio of worthy activities. International standards instead require attention to the relationship between a measure and the risk it is meant to address. Mapping a former torture centre is valuable. It is not the same as transforming that centre.
A duty of the state as a whole
The Communication begins with a reference to a rule. Under Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Human Rights Committee’s General Comment No. 31, treaty obligations bind every branch and level of government. A federal allocation of competence may determine which authority must act internally, but it cannot fragment Brazil’s international responsibility.
This does not mean that the federal government must itself operate every local memorial. It means that the state must secure a compliant result. The February response given by Brazil appropriately records national projects, including mapping, signage and support for selected memory sites. Yet aggregate activity cannot answer a site-specific failure. Brazil must show, in order to demonstrate its compliance with its international obligations, how those initiatives preserve the building, secure public access, implement the Minas Gerais law and include victims and civil society in its governance.
International law does not invariably require a museum in every former detention centre. The DOPS case is narrower. Domestic legislation selected this building; official truth processes supported its conversion; and the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence’s 2025 report on Brazil called for sites of past violations to be preserved, placed under civil jurisdiction, and converted into Memorials. These standards do not prescribe every curatorial choice. Specificity here derives from the site’s direct relationship to the violations, that particular state’s law, the truth commissions’ recommendations, and repeated official recognition of its commemorative purpose. In those circumstances, substituting a map or plaque for the promised institutional transformation requires more than an inventory of other programmes.
From preservation to participation
The legal purpose of memorialisation is not exhausted by conserving a building. Principle 3 of the Updated Set of Principles to Combat Impunity connects preservation of memory and archives to protection against revisionism and denial. Principle 22 of the Basic Principles on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law includes commemoration and accurate public education among measures of satisfaction. The Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence’s report on memorialisation processes further treats memory as a process that must transmit accurate accounts to present and future generations and create space for debate about causes, responsibilities and consequences.
EJIL:Talk! previously asked whether Brazil’s National Truth Commission produced late truth without justice. A recent post on Stones of Memory in Gaza framed memorialisation through truth, remedy and participation. The present situation of the former DOPS site in Minas Gerais adds a further question: can the state claim progress in memorialisation while the people performing that public function at the designated site are treated as an obstacle?
The Communication records that civil society groups occupied this particular former DOPS building on 1 April 2025 after decades of delay. They organised exhibitions, debates and free guided visits, and received more than 20,000 visitors over eight months. The Communication also records allegations that the state later sought closure of the then occupied building, with an order to remove the participants in the intervention, and authorisation to use force. These remain allegations, and property, safety and administrative concerns can justify proportionate regulation. These concerns, however valid, cannot erase the underlying duty or replace a participatory arrangement with exclusion. Principles 32 and 35 of the Updated Principles make the meaningful role of victims and civil society part of the design and implementation of truth-seeking, reparation and non-recurrence measures.
A site-specific test for non-recurrence
The DOPS dispute suggests a practical test, proposed here as an analytical synthesis of the standards above. First, is the material site and its archive preserved and accessible? Second, has control of the site been aligned with its commemorative purpose, including through a secure civilian institutional arrangement? Third, do victims, relatives and civil society have a meaningful role in determining how the site narrates responsibility and harm? Fourth, is implementation protected by a budget, timetable and public monitoring mechanism capable of surviving political change?
These elements do not turn international law into museum administration. They translate an abstract guarantee into measures responsive to the relevant risk. At the former DOPS, that risk includes not only physical decay, but also institutional continuity, denial and the removal of those who have sustained public memory during state inaction. A national mapping programme can support this work, but cannot substitute for the work itself.
Brazil’s February response to the UN Mandates’ Communication is expressly incomplete: it awaits information from the state of Minas Gerais on the non-implementation of the law and on the treatment of civil society at the site. A complete response should therefore do more than provide a generic list of federal initiatives. It should identify the authority responsible, set out an enforceable path to implementation, guarantee interim preservation and access to the site, and explain how affected communities will participate in its design.
The former DOPS building in Minas Gerais presents a simple but demanding question: can a state remember the address of repression without changing the relationship that address embodies? A map records where violence occurred. A memorial changes who may speak there, what public authority acknowledges, and how future generations encounter the past. That transformation is not decorative. It is part of the legal duty to guarantee non-recurrence.
Photo: Memorial dos Direitos Humanos, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Source: Wikimedia Commons.