In June 1988 a group of professionals and social activists involved with urban poor development activities in various Asian countries established the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (to be called in short, “ACHR” onwards). The first activity the group implemented was a Regional Campaign against evictions in Korea. This led to a number of new regional activities with a larger number and broader range of contact groups. ACHR evolved into a regional network and representative for Habitat International Coalition, for Asia. It has also become the main regional network on human settlements and urban issues consulted by many UN agencies such as UNCHS, UNDP and ESCAP.



Since its inception the ACHR secretariat has been located in Bangkok, keeping itself small, low-cost, and with only a few full-time staff. It has encouraged the decentralization of various regional activities and related coordination to other member groups in the region, as far as possible. In Bangkok, which is centrally located in the region, communication costs are efficient and cheaper and related services such as foreign exchange and finance are flexible. These factors make Bangkok a convenient location for the secretariat. Because of this, the secretariat has gradually taken more and more coordinating functions as ACHR has grown. Today ACHR has the strength of being an effective regional network to promote necessary changes for people. This depends on the ACHR secretariat's coordinating capacity to promote many activities in collaboration with its diverse number of contact organizations.