"Artificial Intelligence" and "Hallucinate", words of the year for the Collins and Cambridge Dictionaries were strictly linked with modern technologies. Yet, maybe, we should ponder a bit about other words that didn't make it into the official 2023 glossaries, but that are extremely relevant at the moment. Among them there is a term linked with human rights and architecture – domicide.
Mentioned in a report (Download UN_AdequateHousing) published in July 2022 compiled by Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, the term indicates the destruction of houses of civilian inhabitants during wars and conflicts.
In the report entitled "Adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and the right to non-discrimination in this context," the UN Rapporteur analyzes the ongoing and unprecedented violations of the right to adequate housing during and after violent conflicts.
Domicides have happened throughout history: the report highlights for example how during World War II, German Armed Forces employed the tactic of demolishing homes and civilian infrastructure, leading to notable war crime convictions at the Nuremberg Trials.
The Chief of the Operations Staff of the High Command of the German Armed Forces, Alfred Jodl, was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for, inter alia, having ordered the evacuation of all persons in northern Norway and for the burning of their houses, while Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was convicted for ordering to deport civilian inhabitants of the territories occupied by the German Armed Forces under his command in Eastern Europe and to destroy their houses as well as all other objects of economic value.
The report also remembers the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and cites systematic housing destruction in global decolonization movements.
The Commission on Human Rights, in its 1993 resolution, declared forced eviction a gross violation of human rights, emphasizing the right to adequate housing. Governments were urged to take immediate measures to eliminate forced eviction. This obligation extends to situations of internal strife, violent conflict, and occupation.
The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (E/CN.4/1998/53/Add.2) reinforce the right to be protected against arbitrary displacement, emphasizing adherence to international law to prevent conditions leading to displacement.
Similarly, principle 5 of the principles on housing and property restitution for refugees and displaced persons (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2005/17) prohibits the "forced eviction, demolition of houses and destruction of agricultural areas and the arbitrary confiscation or expropriation of land as a punitive measure or as a means or method of war."
Yet the deliberate destruction of homes during violent conflicts continues to the current day, despite existing human rights and humanitarian laws prohibiting arbitrary destruction of housing and displacement.
The list of conflicts that have deprived civilians of their houses is long and comprises Syria, Libya, Myanmar and Ukraine. After Russia invaded Ukraine, in Mariupol alone, a city of 400,000 inhabitants, 90 per cent of all apartment buildings were damaged or destroyed.
Rajagopal reminds in the report how vulnerable people - children, women, people with disabilities, the elderly and members of the LGBTQ+ community - are affected not only differently, but often more detrimentally than others.
Elderly people, for example, are unable to leave conflict zones owing to mobility or sensory impairments and losing their homes from them has also got a psychological impact as they see something they put all their energies in being destroyed. The report mentions the case of Jawad Mahdi, who, at 68 years of age in 2021, lost his home in Gaza City to Israeli airstrikes, and compared the loss of his home and "all [those] years of hard work" to "someone ripping your heart out and throwing it."
"I have witnessed how in just a few seconds a home – the culmination of a life-long effort and the pride of entire families – can be wiped out and turned to rubble," the UN Special Rapporteur states in a press release about the report. "Destroyed is not only a home. Destroyed are the savings of entire families. Destroyed are memories and the comfort of belonging. Along with this comes a social and psychological trauma that is difficult to describe or imagine."
As of 2022, more than 100 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, human rights violations or events seriously disturbing public order. But now numbers have increased since the Israeli-Gaza war started.
On October 7th, Hamas militants initiated an unprecedented attack on Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing 1,200 people and taking 240 hostages. In response, the Israeli military conducted air strikes on Gaza and launched a ground offensive. According to the United Nations reports, so far, close to two million people were forced to leave their homes in Gaza, with hundreds of thousands facing challenges in securing adequate food and water for survival.
Satellite imagery indicates damage to 98,000 buildings in Gaza, including the main Palestinian court, the Palestinian Legislative Council complex, over 300 education facilities and over 150 places of worship, while 26 out of 35 hospitals are not functioning. The current devastation raises concerns about the concept of domicide with commentators wondering whether the mass destruction of buildings results from the search for Hamas or a covert plan to expel Palestinians, making the territory of Gaza uninhabitable.
The concept of "domicide" is increasingly accepted but not recognized as a distinct crime against humanity under international law, while Rajagopal states it should be recognised as a crime.
A Professor of Law and Development at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston, Rajagopal actually spotted a gap in international law that may be allowing the destruction in Gaza: the Rome statute protects civilian homes in conflicts between states but does not categorize it as a crime against humanity in conflicts within a state or involving non-state actors. In this case, Israel may argue that the conflict is not international because it does not recognize Palestine as a state.
Rajagopal's report emphasizes the need for urgent international action to address and prevent these violations, calling attention to the lack of reparation, limited options for voluntary return, and the absence of just and durable solutions and stresses the necessity for further measures to ensure justice and respect for human rights in post-conflict and reconstruction settings.
Hopefully, domicide will be tackled also at future architecture events such as the Venice Biennale and we will see the UN involving in the discourse also architects such as Shigeru Ban, who have developed humanitarian projects and temporary structures and housing for refugees and victims of disasters across the world.
Though never mentioned in fashion, domicide actually appeared in a fashion collection: over twenty years ago, Hussein Chalayan indirectly referenced it in his "After Words" (A/W 2000-01) collection. The latter was inspired by the news from Kosovo about people fleeing their houses in a rush during the war and carrying their possessions on their backs.
Models during the show removed the covers from chairs and turned them into dresses, then the last model stepped into the middle of a round 1950s-style coffee table, lifted it up and transformed it into a skirt. In this way the refugee theme was linked to the idea of hiding and camouflaging valuable possessions or carrying them along in flight.
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