20 July 2010 | News | Water | Human rights
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UN could recognize human right to water
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On July 28, the UN General Assembly plans to consider a resolution submitted by the Bolivian government to declare the “human right to water and sanitation”. The Global Week of Action to promote this right begins on Tuesday.
A call launched by the Blue Planet project, a Canada-based international civil society organization against water privatization, reads “To get a strong resolution adopted by the General Assembly we must let governments know that we support the human right to water and sanitation and are demanding recognition of these rights in the clearest possible language”.
Of the nearly 6.5 billion people currently living around the world, 884 million have no access to drinking water and 2.6 billion have no basic sanitation services.
On July 12, the Bolivian President, Evo Morales announced that his government had submitted a proposal to declare the human right to water before the UN, while he asked social organizations from all over the world to persuade their heads of state to endorse the call.
A harsh debate is expected at the UN General Assembly. Several industrialized nations have been working to avoid water from being recognized as a human right, including Canada, Australia, the US and the UK.
The differences between industrialized nations and developing ones seem to become more evident when approaching this issue. “I refuse to see this as a North-South issue, but it is beginning to look like it”, Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project, told IPS news agency.
In a letter sent to representatives of the 192 UN member states, the activist says “ in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world”.
Barlow explains that Canada has stopped the most basic steps towards an international recognition of the access to water as a universal right.
Meanwhile, another member of the Blue Planet Project, Anil Naidoo, told IPS that “International and local community groups fighting for water justice have long been calling for leadership from the U.N. in clearly recognizing that water and sanitation are human rights”.
Naidoo has been working with tens of developing countries to promote the document submitted by Bolivia. Over 20 countries have sponsored it. “As this moves forward we are demanding that the language of the resolution remain strong and leave no doubt that water and sanitation are human rights”.
