PHM-Exch> The human right to water

[Claudio Schuftan]

UN Recognizes Access to Clean Water as a Human Right



NEW YORK, New York, July 29, 2010 (ENS) - Access to clean, safe

drinking water is now an official basic human right everywhere in the

world, like the rights to life, health, food and adequate housing. The

water rights resolution was approved late Wednesday by the United

Nations General Assembly, not unanimously, but without opposition.

Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to

the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the United Nations

General Assembly declared Wednesday, voting to expand the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights to include the right to clean water and

sanitation.

The 192-member Assembly called on United Nations member states

and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other

resources to help poorer countries scale up their efforts to provide clean,

accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone.

Introduced by Bolivia, the resolution received 122 votes in favor

and zero votes against, while 41 countries abstained from voting.

The text of the resolution expresses deep concern that an estimated 884

million people lack access to safe drinking water and a total of more

than 2.6 billion people, 40 percent of the global population, do not have

access to basic sanitation. About 1.5 million children under the age of five

die each year because of water-related and sanitation-related diseases.


"Diarrhea is the second most important cause of the death of children

below the age of five," said Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the

United Nations, introducing the resolution. "The lack of access to drinking

water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined."

The United States was one of the 41 countries that abstained from voting

on this measure - not because the U.S. does not support the universal

right to water, but because the UN's Human Rights Council in Geneva

is working on the issue in a better way, said John Sammis, U.S. deputy

representative to the Economic and Social Council.

"This resolution describes a right to water and sanitation in a way that

is not reflective of existing international law; as there is no "right to

water and sanitation" in an international legal sense as described by this

resolution," Sammis said.

"The United States regrets that this resolution diverts us from the

serious international efforts underway to promote greater coordination

and cooperation on water and sanitation issues," said Sammis.

"This resolution attempts to take a short-cut around the serious work of

formulating, articulating and upholding universal rights," he said. "It was

not drafted in a transparent, inclusive manner, and the legal implications
of

a declared right to water have not yet been carefully and fully considered

in this body or in Geneva."

Unlike some, Germany views the text not as a threat to the European

Union-led "Geneva process" on water and sanitation, but rather as

another component of that process, said Ambassador Peter Wittig.

At the same time, Germany would have preferred that the text include

more language proposed by the European Union, he said. It nevertheless

included important elements of the work going on within the Human

Rights Council and that of the Independent Expert on the subject.

Germany invited delegations to support and participate actively in

the Geneva process in order fully to understand the right to water and

sanitation.

The General Assembly resolution welcomes the UN Human Rights

Council's request that Catarina de Albuquerque, the UN Independent

Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe

drinking water and sanitation, report annually to the General Assembly.

De Albuquerque's report will focus on the principal challenges to

achieving the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, as

well as on progress towards the relevant Millennium Development Goals.
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