About CAHR

History

The Mahakan fort at the edge of Rattanakosin, Bangkok.

The idea for CAHR began in 2002 with the inspiration from a small community in Bangkok who lived beside the old fort Pom Mahakan and behind one of the last remaining sections of the old wall surrounding the original settlement of Rattanakosin in Bangkok (for background see here and here). KMUTT Architecture students worked with this community in developing an alternative plan to prevent a forced eviction – an eviction the city planning department had been advocating since the early 1990s and their Rattanakosin Master Plan which called for this community to be replaced with a tourist park. In March of 2003, the community submitted a grievance to the National Human Rights Commission of Thailand. Part of the success of their argument against eviction was the design of the community plan that the students had devised with the residents. As a result of their success, Graeme Bristol, CAHR’s founder, began to see that, while law is a critical tool in the protection of human rights, design could be used as one of those tools as well. How is it, then, that architecture and human rights intersect?

Mission

Mission Statement

CAHR is working in several areas to establish a rights-based approach (RBA) to development. Architecture, planning, and engineering have a profound effect on our built environment, and we believe that the application of a rights-based approach will have an equally positive effect on the practice of architecture, on the rights of citizens and on the built environment itself. To that end, the mission of CAHR is to spread that understanding of the RBA to the profession through education, research, and demonstration building.

The original (2005) and extended version of the Mission Statement is here.

Why a Rights-Based Approach?

These diverse projects have something in common

• Urban regeneration projects
• Three Gorges Dam
• Recovery from natural disasters

They all involve engineers, architects and planners and they all result in the displacement of people. A 2007 report estimated that there were 163 million people who had been forcibly displaced. ‘Development-induced displacement’ (see also, here, here, and here) accounted for 65% of forced evictions – more than all other causes combined – disasters, persecution, and conflict. Many communities pay a heavy price for urban development. To that extent, they are not seeking a ‘Right to Development’ but rather protection from it. As architects, planners, and engineers, we are largely responsible for implementing this development. This suggests a different approach from these professions – a rights-based approach (for the UN perspective on RBA see here, here, and here – Ch.8).

The design of the built environment can and should support rights through improved education and more effective and responsive work in communities.

How are rights and architecture connected?

Over many years I have found at least these 6 areas of focus where we see rights and architecture intersect:

• Participatory Rights – This is in furtherance of the Vancouver Declaration at the first UN-Habitat conference in 1976, Sec. 2, para. 13 “All persons have the right and the duty to participate, individually and collectively in the elaboration and implementation of policies and programmes of their human settlements.”
• Cultural Rights – working with vulnerable communities in the protection of their cultural history
• Rights of access – working with communities to overcome exclusion in the access to buildings, to resources, and to the city
• Housing rights – working with vulnerable communities to provide design alternatives to forced eviction, particularly evictions created through development-induced displacement
• Environmental rights – working with vulnerable communities in the protection of traditional and legal land rights in the face of disaster and development as well as the protection of their rights to clean water and air.
• Workers’ rights – providing a safe haven away from construction sites for the children of migrant construction workers and improving access to education, training, housing and health care for workers and their families living on construction sites and construction camps.

Implementation: How does CAHR protect and promote rights in the built environment?

CAHR has been working in four different areas to demonstrate these connections:

• Formal education – a rights-based approach to the professional degree in architecture as well as a research Masters. This work was initiated at the KMUTT architecture school. We continue to work towards establishing a UNESCO Chair at an appropriate host university.
• Informal education – field training and built environment education for children in vulnerable communities. This began at the Girls’ Home at the Mercy Center in Bangkok. This was described in a paper here and published in the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography here.
• Research/monitoring – both university-centred and independent research on the implications of human rights on the built environment such as codes and regulations, migrant construction workers and their families, participatory approaches, equity, and justice. That research is ongoing and is available in related journals and books (see ‘Research’)
• Building – the design and construction of demonstration projects which illustrate the relationship between rights and design. An example of one of these building projects is the ‘portable school’ in Samut Prakan for the children of migrant construction workers (see the funders’ report here)

CAHR Board

“The Centre for Architecture and Human Rights was first registered under the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act” in July of 2006. It is governed by a Board of Directors.”

Founding Board

First board meeting with (L to R) Graeme Bristol, Martin Golder, Joan Firkins December 2007

The first board meeting was held in December 2007 with Joan Firkins, Martin Golder, and Graeme Bristol.