According to a 2003 World Health Report, “The Right to Water” at least 1.1 billion do not have available sources of clean drinking-water, such as protected springs and wells.
Canadian activist Maude Barlow says this water crisis is perhaps the most urgent ecological and human threat of our time. In October 2008, Ms. Barlow, head of the Council of Canadians, was named senior adviser on water issues to the United Nations.
Campaign to Stop Privatization of Water
Ms. Barlow has long campaigned against the privatization of water systems. She says part of her UN job will be to try to set up a new convention on water rights that would “establish that water is a right and that nobody in the world should be denied water because they can’t pay for it, and right now if you can’t pay for it you die in many, many countries.”
Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on April 22, 2009, Ms. Barlow said “More children die each year of water-borne disease than war, HIV/AIDS, and traffic accidents combined. In their recent World Water Development Report (March 16, 2009), 24 agencies of the United Nations confirmed what those of us working in the field already knew: that the global water crisis is getting worse by the day and threatening millions more people every year.”
She believes firmly that clean water must be delivered as a public service, not a profitable commodity. And, she sees access to clean, affordable water as a fundamental human right.
Drive to Make Clean Water a Basic Human Right
Ms. Barlow told the UN General Assembly: “Most Western law has viewed natural resources as the property of humans. We need new laws to regulate human behaviour in order to protect the integrity of the Earth and all species on it from our wanton exploitation. As Martin Luther King said, the law may not change the heart but it will restrain the heartless.”
There has been some progress toward the goal. In 2000, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted a General Comment on the right to health that, according to the World Health Organization, “provides a normative interpretation of the right to health as enshrined in Article 12 of the Covenant (International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights).
“This General Comment interprets the right to health as an inclusive right that extends not only to timely and appropriate health care but also to those factors that determine good health. These include access to safe drinking-water and adequate sanitation, a sufficient supply of safe food, nutrition, and housing, healthy occupational and environmental conditions, and access to health-related education, and information."
A couple of years later, the Committee “recognized that water itself was an independent right. Drawing on a range of international treaties and declarations, it stated: ‘the right to water clearly falls within the category of guarantees essential for securing an adequate standard of living, particularly since it is one of the most fundamental conditions for survival.’ ”
Motion on Right to Water Rejected
Despite the best efforts of Ms. Barlow and thousands of other activists, the World Water Council turned down an effort to declare water a basic human right at its meeting in Istanbul, Turkey in March 2009.
CBC News reported (March 22, 2009) on how the Council carefully parsed “a statement that recognizes access to safe drinking water as a ‘basic human need,’ but not a ‘human right,’ as some delegates had proposed.”
However, some countries did not want to go along with that declaration; 20 nations issued their own dissenting opinion.
Need for Fresh Water Is Growing Critical
In addition to the more than a billion people who lack access to clean water, the UN estimates that 2.5 billion are without water for sanitation.
And, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, nearly half of the world’s population will be living in areas with freshwater shortages by 2030. Most of those people will be living in China and South Asia.
Groups such as Righttowater.org.uk are continuing the campaign to make water a basic human right. Their aim is to make binding on all nations the statement of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that “Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and therefore a basic human right.”
