Indicator history

Aside from various reports drafted along the years and also looking at Roma housing, a 2011 Amnesty International report documented the situation of various Roma communities in Romania from the perspective of the right to housings with all its facets. The report argues that Romania has an inadequate legal framework in the area of housing, not incorporating international human rights standards. According to AI, this legal gap and inadequacy, combined with the existence of pervasive discrimination against the Roma “has led to widespread violations of the right to housing, including forced evictions, and resettlement of families and communities in conditions that fall far below international standards”. It also argues that local authorities are not held accountable and that the victims have limited or no access to justice and remedies. In 2012, Amnesty International issed another brief developing a checklist for neccessary legal changes and focusing on the case of a Roma community forcefully evicted from the city centre in the middle of winter 2010 to the outskirts of Cluj Napoca municipality next to the city garbage collection site but also next to a larger, pre-exiting segregated and extremely impovrished Roma community living in shacks.

Source:

Amnesty International, Mind the Legal Gap, Roma and the right to housing in Romania, June 2011, available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/EUR39/004/2011/en/5f9becde-66e9-4262-bb3a-ff1c3681046d/eur390042011en.pdf (last accessed: 19.02.2012); Amnesty Iternational, Unsafe foundations: secure the right to housing in Romania (EUR 39/002/2012), 08.05.2012, available at: http://amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR39/002/2012/en (accessed at: 25.02.2013)