31) What has gone wrong?

People can encounter modern-day slavery without even realizing it. They can encounter on a construction site workers under hard hats and hi-vis clothing who have become perfectly camouflaged and unnoticed modern slaves. They clean and prepare construction sites by removing debris and hazards, they operate concrete mixers, they tear down buildings, they dig tunnels and mine shafts, they build highways and roads, they remove asbestos, lead, or chemicals, they carry tools and materials, they work with cement masons, they clean up sites and remove waste. Human trafficking is the use of force, fraud, or coercion to compel another person’s labor. It is estimated that there are 27 million slaves in the world today, many of these work in the global construction industry.

Most victims of human trafficking are poor and marginalized. They’re migrants, people of color. A very large number of them are escaping a country or a part of the world affected by civil war, ethnic conflicts, kleptocratic governments, or disease. Construction workers are among the world’s most underpaid and exploited laborers. Their working and living condition are shocking and the violation of their human dignity heart-breaking. Being vulnerable does not make them slaves. What it takes to turn a construction worker, who is destitute and vulnerable, into a slave is the absence of human rights in architecture. Yet this seems like an overwhelming level of responsibility for architects.

Now we have to ask ourselves, are we willing to live in a world with slavery?

If we don’t take action, we just leave ourselves open to having someone else use slaves for the benefit of our construction, our design, our architecture. Architects have ways of assuring their clients that nobody had to sacrifice their rights to build the house they love so much.

The global trend towards outsourcing and price-cutting is also not an excuse for human trafficking. Affordable architecture does not need slaves. I believe architects have enough power to bring slavery to an end. Improving the life of vulnerable workers is their responsibility. They are in positions of influence and power and should never turn a blind eye on degrading living conditions, excessive volumes of work, forced overtime, use of threats, or the limited financial penalties imposed for depriving another human being of his or her freedom.

Architects can in response honor ethnical recruitment and fair employment and thus play a crucial role in combatting modern slavery and protecting those most at risk of exploitation. And if there is a fundamental violation of our human dignity then we should all denounce it as horrific, as slavery. If human rights considerations are respected in architecture, this will protect the poor and the vulnerable. The eradication of slavery in construction labour may start just with an architect knowing each worker by name and asking and caring about his or her working conditions.