Ah, the human right to water - a noble, important concept. But what does it mean? Everybody gets water for free if they cannot pay, right? Or not? And it forbids private water suppliers, right? And of course, the USA has endorsed this right, correct? Not that I'm aware.
Enough, already! What does the hman right to water mean in practice? To help answer that, the good folks - Richard Carter, Kerstin Danert, Sean Furey, et al. - at the Rural Water Supply Network have just released a report with the text of a World Bank – RWSN Webinar
with the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque. She is a Portuguese lawyer who has held this position since 2008.
A few years ago, she took the USA to task over the water-sanitation issue (read my post of 11 March 2011).
Here is her most recent report (11 July 2013): Download A-HRC-24-44_en
Back to the RWSN report, which touches upon sanitation although the emphasis is on water. Here is the introduction:
The Rural Water Supply Network (RWSN) Equity and Inclusion group ran
a three week e-discussion (via email) on the hu- man right to water in April/May 2012 (hosted on http://dgroups.org/RWSN/equity). Over 250members were invited to share their hopes, fears, questions and suggestions about how the human right to water affects the finance, planning and implementation of rural water supply projects. It was an interesting discussion and formed the basis for a letter with six questions to Catarina de Albuquerque, the first UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. She responded to the letter in a World Bank-RWSN webinar in June 2012, and answered further questions from participants. This edited transcript of the webinar is intended to enable rural water supply professionals and practitioners to understand more about what the human right to water means in practice.
The report and its WWW site:
Download Human_Right to_Water_PracticeThis is very good document featuring 'the expert'. It does not give a step-by-step checklist, but it's the best discussion of the issue I have encountered. It's only 12 pages, so give it a read.
"I think that we cannot look at the human right to water and think that it’s an obligation for every single state to bring water to every single person in the country. That’s not what we need. What the hu- man right says is that ‘a government has to create an enabling environment in which people can exercise that right.’ " - Catarina de Albuquerque, from the report, p. 8
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