‘Dignity by Design’ in the Built Environment
Agenda for online discussion 11 January 2021
1. Introduction – Vicky Bowman MCRB (5)
2. Eurocham Construction and Infrastructure Advocacy Group – Erik Foppen (co-chair) - CIAG
introductions and priorities (10)
3. IHRB Dignity by Design/Built Environment Project – presentation and questions by Annabel
Short (10)
4. Doh Eain – current relevant activities (5) – Emilie Roell/Bev Salmon
5. Kalaw Market project (5) – Chaw Kalya
6. General discussion of how Dignity by Design could be used in Myanmar (30)
• Challenges and opportunities for implementation in Myanmar, at industry level
• Challenges and opportunities for implementation at the level of specific built environment
projects (including Kalaw Market)
7. Round-up of next steps

Founders:
Financial support from governments of:
• UK
• Norway
• Switzerland
• Netherlands
• Ireland
• Denmark
MCRB aims to provide a trusted and impartial platform for the creation of
knowledge, building of capacity, undertaking of advocacy and promotion of
dialogue amongst businesses, civil society, governments, experts and other
stakeholders with the objective of encouraging responsible business conduct
throughout Myanmar.
myanmar.responsible.business
www.mcrb.org.mm
No. 6.A Shin Saw Pu Rd, Ahlone, Yangon
Tel/Fax: 01 01-512613
Institute for
Human Rights
and Business

What Does A ‘Responsible Business’ Do?
3
ဥပဒေကို
ဒလေးစာေးလိုက်နာခြင်ေး
Respect the law
လာဘ်ဒပေးလာဘ်ယူမှု/
လဖက်ရည်ဖိုေး ဒပေးခြင်ေးမ ေး
မလိုပ်ဒ ာင်ခြင်ေး
Not pay bribes or tea
money
၎င်ေး၏ အလိုပ်သမာေးမ ာေးကို
ဒလေးစာေးခြင်ေး
Respect workers’ rights
၎င်ေး၏ Customer မ ာေးကို
တာဝန်ယူမှုရစာခဖင်
က် ံခြင်ေး
Treat customers
responsibly
အြန်ဒ ာင်ခြင်ေး
Pay taxes
အခြာေးစေးပာေးဒရေးလိုပ်ငန်ေး
မ ာေးကို တဝန်ယူမှုရ
စာ က် ံ န်ေးခြင်ေး
Treat other businesses
responsibly
သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်ေးက င်ကို
ဒလေးစာေးခြင်ေး
Respect the environment
လူအြင်အဒရေးကို
ဒလေးစာေးခြင်ေး
Respect human rights
ပင်လင်ေးခမင်သာမှုရခြင်ေး
Be transparent
သက် ိုင်သူမ ာေးနင်
ြ တ် က်ဒ ာင်ရက်ခြင်ေး
Engage with
stakeholders

4
The European Standardization
Organizations CEN and CENELEC
approved the first European standard on
the accessibility and usability of the built
environment. EN 17210, Accessibility
and usability of the built environment –
Functional requirements will be
published at the beginning of 2021.
It sets out the requirements that the
built environment, including urban
areas, needs to fulfill in order to be
considered accessible and usable.
It will help Member States, and more
particularly architects, to guarantee
accessibility for persons with disabilities,
and many other people with functional
limitations, to the physical environment.

Advocacy Strategy
Construction and Infrastructure Advocacy Group (CIAG)
Group Mandate
The aim of the group is to provide support and objective
guidance to the Myanmar government in its effort to build the
nation in a sustainable, affordable and qualitative manner.
Group Advocacy Agenda
▪ Construction Standards
▪ Sustainability in Construction
▪ Preservation of Heritage
▪ Enforcing Construction Safety
▪ Contract Management
Standardisation
Group Advocacy Activities
➢ Dialogue with Myanmar and
International Stakeholders (both
public and private)
➢ Technical Advisory and Policy
Recommendations
➢ Development of Advocacy Platform
Main advocacy vision …
… as the main tool for Sustainable
Development

Memorandum of Understanding
with
Federation of Myanmar Engineering
Societies
Myanmar Construction Entrepreneurs
Federation
Advocacy Strategy
Construction and Infrastructure Advocacy Group (CIAG)
Group Members
If deployed effectively and throughout the entire sector, they provide a common
technical language and are the basis of assessing performance of construction
products and protocols to achieve quality and sustainability.
Standardisation

Coalition for Dignity
In the Built Environment

Building Dignity pilots: Putting the Framework into Practice
Why
• Maximize social outcomes and mitigate human rights
risks – on site and through supply chains
• Strengthen active participation and agency of end-
users, local communities, workers
• Strengthen collaboration between decision-makers
across the lifecycle
• Demonstrate leadership and competitive advantage
• Generate and share lessons-learned as part of a global
community of practice
• Scale action by inspiring others
How
• Establish Building Dignity roles within project team,
and accountability mechanism
• Map and engage rights holders from outset and
throughout
• Conduct human rights due diligence and identify social
outcomes – action plan for project lifecycle
• Integrate the findings into project processes,
identifying key leverage points to embed human rights
• Adapt, learn, adjust along the way
• Document and share learnings

First pilot project underway:
The conversion of a former school building into an
inclusion centre for newly-arrived migrants and
refugees in Bergen, Norway
The pilot is part of Bergen’s designation as a
“human rights city”
Pilot project lead on the ground: Bergen City
Architects
Coalition partner on the ground: Rafto Foundation
Preliminary design phase complete, moving into
detailed design and construction phase, project
completion date December 2023

Doh Eain
Renewing Yangon

Doh Eain is a participatory design practice based in Yangon, Myanmar, dedicated to making better cities. In
a world of rapid urbanisation, we want to ensure that cities remain places with identity, and that they are
liveable, inclusive and sustainable.
Restoration
Protecting buildings
for local homeowners
and creating
sustainable solutions
Public Space Design
Creating inclusive public
spaces together with
those that use them
Public Outreach
Building the next
generation of city
shapers. advocacy and
campaigns for resilient
cities and communities.
Research and
Engagement Gathering
data, fostering
collaboration, agency and
empowerment with local
communities
About Doh Eain
Our Areas of Work

About Doh Eain
Who We Are and The Services We Offer
We are a multidisciplinary team of 35 researchers, urban designers, architects,
community engagement specialists and PR professionals. We are a mix of
Yangon nationals and long-time Yangon residents originally from Europe, the US
and Australia.
● Research
● Community Engagement
● Community-Led Placemaking
● Urban Planning
● Public Space Design
● Architectural Design
● Heritage Building Conservation
● Property Management
● Financial Investment Support
● Programming and Events
● Awareness Raising, Advocacy &
Events
● Workshops, Education & Training
We provide the following services:

Downtown Yangon
The Challenge
Yangon has an incredibly rich history. Once the
‘Pearl of the East’, the city has layers of historical
and cultural influences, making it a unique place to
live in and travel to.
Following decades of military rule and relative
isolation, Yangon presently has one of the highest
concentrations of intact heritage buildings in Asia. It
still features cohesive historical neighborhoods with
green public spaces keen to keep their history alive.
However, between 1990 and 2011 35% of Yangon’s
heritage buildings were destroyed (~1800 buildings).
More are destroyed every year. As the economy
expands and land values rise, more and more
heritage owners opt to demolish. At the same time
already limited public space is rapidly diminishing.

Downtown Yangon
The Challenge
There is a significant lack of public space in Yangon.
Yangon inhabitants only have 0.37 square meters of public
space per person. In comparison Jakarta has 6 square
meters, Bangkok, has 8.5 square meters and Paris has 30
square meters. Public spaces are vital for people and
cities. They stimulate local economies, support healthy
behaviours and create a sense of identity and social
cohesion.
There are significant social inequalities in communities in
Yangon, particularly for those who are more vulnerable and
for women and girls. Well designed and inclusive places
can have profound and positive impacts on the lives of all
Yangon’s citizens.
Infrastructure is weak with challenges in water
management, waste management, sewage and mobility
(particularly no-car). This has a wide-ranging impact - on
personal health, space, environment, drainage, climate
change

Our Principles
The values that underpin our work
Participation
Asset Based
Inclusiveness
Environmentally
Sustainable
Financially Sustainable
Working with communities can be consultative, participatory or co-creative. We believe that
neighbourhood where the local community members are actively participating in regenerating their
areas are the most successful and sustainable.
We believe an asset-based approach can inspire confidence, pride and long-term stewardship.
Instead of a focus on problems or needs, our work starts with understanding strengths.
We seek in all our activities to be inclusive of age, gender, (dis)ability, socio-economic background,
religion and ethnicity, and continually reflect and take positive action to promote the inclusion of
excluded individuals and groups.
We use sustainable materials, apply sustainable design thinking, and have a long-term view in our
projects, Where possible, our projects intend to contribute to biodiversity and health in the city.
Where possible we want our projects to contribute to the livelihoods of people, e.g. through the
increase of the value of their assets or new income opportunities.

Approach
A Holistic Approach to Transformation of the Built Environment
Design
Procurement
Financing
Implementatio
n
Maintenance
Community &
Stakeholder
Engagement
Research
Monitoring &
Evaluation

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects
Advisory Work on Financing the Protection of Built Heritage - AICS
Financial modelling and advisory work on the protection of built cultural
heritage for a 15 million Euro fund (grant and loan components) established
by the Italian Government to the Myanmar Government. Work includes EIRR
calculations assessing social, environmental, cultural and economic impact.

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects
Global Future Cities Project: Moe Lan Thar - UKFCDO
International programme funded by the UK government to support the reduction of
poverty through economic growth and resilient development. The Yangon programme is
focusing on ‘revitalising Yangon streetscapes’ and implementing a pilot project on exemplar
public space and integrated design along with policy guidelines for the long-term impact of
the ground-breaking project in Myanmar.

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects
Climate resilience for Water Security, Thaketa - RVO, Kingdom of the
Netherlands
A Dutch consortium of technical specialists bringing Climate Resilience and
Water Security to Thaketa through an innovative community led approach to
integrate technical solutions. The team includes expert engineers, flood
modellers, real-estate development specialists, water supply specialists and water
treatment specialists.

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects
Yangon Alley Garden Programme - Multiple sponsors
In 2017 Doh Eain started an initiative, initially through crowdfunding, to transform the back alleyways of
Yangon from waste dumping sites into safe active spaces. The programme has developed into a network
of 12 Alley Gardens which were transformed through a robust community engagement process of co-
creation.
Our existing network of Alley Gardens provide 14,000 sq m of public space with 16 community
committees established and 7,900 residents directly participating in the process. The Alley Gardens
currently see 300,000 visitors every year.

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects
Heritage Building Restoration - Doh Eain & Impact Investors
We finance, design and deliver heritage restoration projects;
working with local homeowners and communities to protect
buildings which are at risk of demolition and providing a
sustainable income for their families. We currently have a
portfolio of 25 properties across Yangon.

Examples of Our Work
Selection of Current Projects