Romanistan

Romanistan, Romastan or Romanestan is the name of a proposed country, for the Romani people.

Romanistan is generally understood as a cultural and historical presence centralised in the Balkans of southeastern Europe. The creation of an autonomous region for the Romani was suggested by the leaders of a party in North Macedonia known as the Party for the Complete Emancipation of Roma (and also reportedly by a Romani party in Hungary) in the early 1990s, at Šuto Orizari. The proposal of such a region in North Macedonia was also briefly considered by Josip Tito, leader of Socialist Yugoslavia but the idea never materialized. Several times during the 1920s and 1930s, ideas of an autonomous Romani state within the USSR were raised. Such efforts were dropped by 1936–37. In the early 1950s, Romani leaders petitioned the United Nations for the creation of their own state, but their petition was rejected. Given the South Asian origins of the Romani, Romanistan has even been envisaged as being in South Asia, within the borders of the Indian subcontinent.