18 ethics instruments
Treaties, declarations and codes that set out what design owes to people and to the planet, article by article.
ACE Manifesto on the New European Bauhaus (2024)
Architects' Council of Europe (ACE), the representative body for the architectural profession at European level · 2024
Published in January 2024 by the Architects' Council of Europe, the representative body for the architectural profession at European level, this manifesto is the profession's own answer to the European Union's New European Bauhaus initiative. Across seven sections it argues that quality in architecture is a matter of public interest, that master planning must precede any spatial intervention, that the act of building should be treated as an evolutionary process, and that Europe's housing crisis requires ending the search for short-term economic gains and reversing the downward spiral of cheap standardisation. It closes with seven numbered conclusions addressed to architects themselves.
African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (Banjul Charter) — core principles summary
Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) · 1981
Adopted at Nairobi in 1981 by the Organisation of African Unity and in force since 1986, the Banjul Charter is unusual among major regional rights treaties in recognising collective rights of peoples alongside individual ones: self-determination, free disposal of their wealth and natural resources, development, peace, and a generally satisfactory environment. It is also the only one with an explicit chapter of individual duties, toward family, society, the state and the international community. Civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are treated as one indivisible set rather than split across separate treaties, and enforcement runs through a Commission with a strong promotional mandate alongside a Court that can issue binding judgments.
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) — core principles summary
Organisation of African Unity (now the African Union) · 1990
Adopted by the Organisation of African Unity in 1990 and in force since 1999, this is Africa's own binding children's rights treaty, adopted because member states judged that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child missed socio-cultural and economic realities particular to Africa. It is a stated correction to that Convention rather than a regional restatement of it. It defines protection from economic exploitation broadly, covering work that is hazardous or that interferes with education, health, or a child's physical, social, mental, spiritual or moral development, and it names harmful social and cultural practices as a distinct category of harm alongside abuse, trafficking and exploitation.
African Convention on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (revised, "Maputo Convention")
African Union (revising the 1968 Algiers Convention of the Organization of African Unity) · 2003
The African Union's own binding conservation framework, adopted at Maputo in 2003 as a modernisation of the 1968 Algiers Convention and in force since 2016. Its stated purpose is to encourage individual and joint action for the conservation, utilisation and development of soil, water, flora and fauna, for the present and future welfare of humankind. Unlike many framework conventions it gives itself both a Conference of Parties and a dedicated Secretariat so its provisions can be enforced, and it writes the traditional rights and indigenous knowledge of local communities into conservation strategy rather than treating them as obstacles.
American Convention on Human Rights ("Pact of San José") — core principles summary
Organization of American States (OAS) · 1969
Adopted by the Organization of American States at San José in 1969 and in force since 1978, the Pact of San José binds its parties to the classic civil and political rights, with economic, social and cultural rights added later through the separate 1988 Protocol of San Salvador. Enforcement runs in two tiers: the Inter-American Commission receives individual petitions and can refer unresolved cases to the Inter-American Court, whose judgments bind the states that have accepted its jurisdiction. Certain guarantees may be suspended in war or public emergency, but the Convention names an explicit non-derogable core, including the right to life, humane treatment, freedom from slavery and the rights of the child, that stands even then.
Arab Charter on Human Rights — core principles summary
League of Arab States · 2004
The League of Arab States' binding regional rights treaty, adopted in its revised form in 2004 and in force from 2008 after the seventh ratification; an earlier 1994 draft was never ratified and never entered into force. It grounds itself in the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration and the international covenants while also affirming the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, placing itself deliberately between the two lineages rather than choosing one. Its rights list follows the familiar civil and political core, and enforcement runs through an independent Arab Human Rights Committee reviewing state reports every three years rather than through a court. Ten states have ratified it, and Arab civil society groups have criticised it as falling short of international standards in documented ways.
Architects Declare Climate and Biodiversity Emergency (2019)
UK Architects Declare, a network of architectural practices originated by Steve Tompkins and Michael Pawlyn and launched by the then 17 UK Stirling Prize recipients; now a registered charity. Wider umbrella: Built Environment Declares. · 2019
Launched on 30 May 2019 by the then seventeen UK recipients of the Stirling Prize, Architects Declare is a pledge signed by individual architectural practices rather than by institutes or states. Its twelve commitments are concrete enough to change a firm's scope of work: whole life carbon modelling and post occupancy evaluation as part of basic service, upgrading existing buildings rather than demolishing whenever there is a viable choice, open-source sharing of knowledge, and a shift to low embodied carbon materials. Over 1,400 UK practices have signed, and more than 8,200 across 28 countries under the wider Built Environment Declares banner.
ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) · 2002
A binding regional treaty adopted by the member states of ASEAN in 2002 and in force since 2003, written for one specific recurring harm: smoke from land and forest fires that crosses national borders. Prevention and monitoring are named as the primary duty, with emergency response as the backstop, and the treaty followed more than a decade of softer regional measures that proved insufficient. It was the first regional treaty anywhere aimed specifically at haze pollution, and it is now ratified by all ten ASEAN member states, Indonesia only in 2015.
ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (AHRD) — core principles summary
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) · 2012
A political declaration adopted by the ten ASEAN member states at Phnom Penh in 2012, and the first region-wide human rights instrument for Southeast Asia. It affirms a broad set of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to a safe, clean and sustainable environment, modelled on the structure of the Universal Declaration. It is not a treaty: it creates no enforceable individual claim and no regional court or commission with binding authority. Its clause requiring rights to be considered in the regional and national context drew sustained criticism from UN human rights bodies and civil society as a possible basis for limiting rights, and that criticism belongs with the text.
Bamako Convention on the Ban of the Import into Africa and the Control of Transboundary Movement and Management of Hazardous Wastes within Africa
African Union (originally Organization of African Unity) · 1991
Africa's own binding answer to the hazardous waste trade, negotiated at Bamako in 1991 by states of the then Organization of African Unity and in force since 1998. Where the Basel Convention regulates hazardous waste movements through prior informed consent, Bamako bans the import of hazardous and radioactive waste into Africa outright, and closes the routes around that ban by prohibiting ocean and inland water dumping and incineration. It writes the precautionary principle directly into the treaty, and pairs the ban with obligations to soundly manage the waste African states generate themselves. It exists because African states did not trust Basel to stop wealthier nations exporting toxic waste to the continent.
Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (CDHRI)
Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), formerly the Organization of the Islamic Conference · 1990
Adopted at Cairo in 1990 by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation as general guidance in the field of human rights, this is a declaration rather than a treaty and creates no court or enforcement mechanism of its own. Its Article 24 states that all the rights and freedoms it stipulates are subject to the Islamic Sharia, which makes its source of authority different in kind from the Universal Declaration's grounding of rights in human dignity independent of any single tradition. It has been criticised by human rights bodies and scholars over freedom of religion, corporal punishment and discrimination, criticism tied directly to that article. It is held here with that criticism attached, because it is the clearest case in this bank of two frameworks disagreeing about where rights come from rather than about which rights to list.
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union — core principles summary
European Union · 2000
Proclaimed in 2000 and legally binding since the Treaty of Lisbon took effect in 2009, the Charter carries the same legal value as the European Union's founding treaties and can be invoked before the Court of Justice. Its 54 articles are grouped under six value headings, Dignity, Freedoms, Equality, Solidarity, Citizens' Rights and Justice, and it opens by stating that human dignity is inviolable and must be respected and protected. It is unusually broad, placing social and economic rights such as fair working conditions, social security, healthcare and environmental protection alongside classic civil liberties, and it addresses bioethics directly, prohibiting eugenic practices, reproductive cloning and making the human body a source of financial gain. It binds the EU institutions, and member states when they apply EU law.