27) Assessing human rights.

After working at the Ethiopian Human Rights High Commission, the lack of human rights and the widespread discrimination in the built environment became very apparent to me. Most of us are concerned with the level of violence in the world. But we’re not going to end it by telling people that violence is morally wrong. Instead, we must offer them a tool that’s at least as powerful and as effective as violence.

Today I find myself assessing human rights everywhere I go—looking for demolition sites and gentrification, but also appraising iconic courthouse designs in search of public spaces, where people can gain their right to a public hearing, trying to find ramps, asking for gender-free toilets, surfing the metro from a blind perspective, searching city parks for spaces where migrants can engage and feel welcome, and reviewing the relationship between housing and basic necessities ranging from education to transportation.

In assessing human rights violations through architecture, I put together a checklist of things that I go through to try and understand them. Whom are human rights accessible to? And whose needs are not being accommodated? Who is excluded? People are either welcomed or shunned. They can face fences of barbed wire or cheering locals. The introduction of the BREMM rating revolutionized the way in which architects incorporate sustainable methods; it became a benchmark in assessing a buildings eco footprint. My assessment is a counterintuitive reaction to inequality and discrimination by architecture. I look for human impacts on the built environment, the destroying of resources, of opportunities, of choices, based on what people depend upon or aspire toward.

Human rights are relevant to all of us, not just those who face repression or mistreatment. They are ‘rights’ because they are things you are allowed to be, to do, or to have. They are also there to help us get along with each other and live in peace. I believe today that it is possible for us as a world community, if we make a bold decision on architecture, to come together and stop destroying the planet and stop trampling over human rights. But it will require three things: commitment, empathy, and creativity.

If we approach certain empirical questions about architecture, we will come to recognize human rights. There is always a connection between human rights and architecture and this connection is verifiable.

The issue of human rights and their relationship to architecture is simply not as obvious to many as it is to me now. A rights-based assessment to architecture is both a vision and a tool-kit: human rights can be the means, the ends, and the mechanism of evaluation and the central focus of sustainable human development. The examples above show just how diverse the array of human rights violations through design can be, despite our high expectations that effective solutions can result from responsible architecture and a regard for communities when designing the built environment. For someone affected by achondroplasia, a bathroom is an example where design infringes upon his or her dignity. We know architecture in terms of conceptual space, perceived space, and lived-in space. These distinctions show the multiple levels at which people are given freedom of choice, freedom of discrimination, opportunities, and rights in their daily life.

In the long run, legislation is not the answer: the law can only do so much. Education and awareness amongst the design community are what will make the difference.

Everyone is starting from a different place and going to a different place. Equality doesn’t mean we require the same environment, but an equal opportunity to address our individual needs and wants. Architecture could offer better solutions to global problems, such as the organization of alternative urban farming food networks. By reaffirming its faith in fundamental human rights such as the right to food, or designing public libraries in such a way that the right of free expression, we can positively transform the life of their more vulnerable patrons, the homeless. It is certainly possible to design small, practical but meaningful solutions to combat the feelings of isolation that migrants can feel when they are relocated to a new country, and must overcome the trauma of displacement, and often war, as they restart their lives.