Amnesty International: 2011 Assignment

Over two million Roma live in Romania, making up more than 10% of the country’s total population. Many of them live in poverty, suffering from material deprivation and often subjected to abuse by state authorities. In 2013, Amnesty International, a human rights organization, asked me for help in making known cases of forced evictions of Roma, gathered in the “Exiled to the outskirts: five cases of forced evictions of Roma in Romania” report.

During my 2011 assignment I mentioned the importance of education the general public on issues so unfamiliar as human rights and forced evictions. Later, in 2012, beside taking the pictures for the report, I was also asked to recommend a PR agency that could help with the educational campaign.

To bring the issue of forced evictions and the right to adequate housing onto the public agenda, the agency I recommended developed a strong emotional idea, impossible to ignore by the media, to explain the legislative changes proposed in the Amnesty International report. This is how the “the House of Cards” concept was born – a symbol of the feeble solutions adopted by authorities whose characters were replaced with actual pictures of those subjected to abuse through forced evictions. 8,000 visitors during the time when the House of Cards stood erected in the University Square; 25,000 signatories of the petition addressed to the Prime Minister; Over 70 newspaper stories, with a total audience of 7,400,500 people.

In October 2013, the Ministry of Labor, Family and Welfare issued a public statement, acknowledging that the issue of forced evictions must be included on the list of legislative changes needed for 2014.