Human rights and water

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Human rights and water

Water and Peace

When properly managed, water can be a peacemaking platform for long lasting cooperation

Water cooperation

Water is a growing concern in many parts of the world. Countries can improve their water resilience through transboundary water cooperation over shared waters.

Indigenous peoples are the custodians of many of the world’s most fragile and important ecosystems. They also possess invaluable knowledge about sustainability and resilience, so they have a vital role in protecting our environment.

Water and the 2030 Agenda

In 2015, the global community launched the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that should be reached by 2030. Some progress has been made, but for most of the goals, the world is not on track to meet the deadline. Water can help us do better.

Water in landscapes

A growing number of people, societies and companies are discovering the power of resilient landscapes. It is still possible to shift to more sustainable practices that recharge water, restore soil health, sequester carbon, and strengthen biodiversity – but we need to make the transformation now.

Agriculture and water

How to increase the productivity of agriculture around the world through better water management.

Groundwater

Groundwater is the regulator of the entire freshwater cycle, but its invisibility makes it difficult to manage and protect.

Rivers

While we all depend heavily on rivers for our survival, many rivers are under constant threat from unsustainable human activities

Water scarcity

Insufficient supply and inadequate infrastructure leaves millions of people in the world without water.

Source-to-Sea

The source-to-sea approach focuses on the strong connection between what happens on land, along waterways, and in the sea.

Water and climate

The climate crisis is essentially a water crisis. When we treat it as such, we get new tools to mitigate climate change and adapt to consequences that are unavoidable.

Water governance

Many of the most pressing challenges in the world are about water: too little, too much or too inferior. Such challenges can only be effectively addressed through adequate governance of available water resources.

The impact of COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of people back into poverty and exposed unacceptable gaps between the rich and the poor. One in three people are still not able to wash their hands with soap and water at home.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

More than two billion people in the world lack safely managed drinking water and twice as many lack safely managed sanitation, making WASH one of the most urgent development challenges.

PERSPECTIVES

Youth and water

More and more young people offer important contributions to solving the growing water challenges they are inheriting.

Having access to water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right since 2010. But water is also essential to ensuring the fulfilment of many other rights.

Gender and water

To improve water governance, we need to take a close look at gender roles.

Having access to water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right since 2010. But water is also essential to ensuring the fulfilment of many other rights.

In 2010, the human rights to safe and clean drinking water and adequate sanitation were formally recognized by the United Nations. The United Nation’s Human Rights Council expressed that the rights to water and sanitation are “derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity.” The resolution established that the entitlements and freedoms, including access to safe drinking water and sanitation, correspond to binding international law on the state as a duty-bearer.

Five years later, this contributed to the inclusion of a specific goal for water and sanitation in the 2030 Agenda. The Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goal 6 seeks to ensure “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” by 2030. The Goals envisage “a world of universal respect for human rights and human dignity”. But without significantly raised ambitions, the goal is not likely to be achieved by 2030, according to the UN-Water Progress Update 2021: SDG 6 Water and Sanitation for All.

Water underpins many human rights

In 2020, a UN report described how water pollution, water scarcity and water-related disasters have disproportionate effects upon vulnerable and marginalized groups and their human rights to life, health, and a safe, clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. This perspective is increasingly important since the climate crisis, conflicts and the COVID-19 pandemic are causing widening gaps between different groups. The UN Special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has warned that this can undermine the human rights of the poor and cause a new form of “climate apartheid”

Access to clean water and safe sanitation has proved to be one of the most efficient ways to break that cycle and close the gaps between different groups. When water is available at home, girls and women are more likely to get an education and income since they are no longer expected to walk long distances to fetch water. Access to sanitation services and wastewater treatment systems improve health and reduce the risk of diseases caused by faecal waste polluting drinking water, which means that more children will go to school, and more adults can work. This, in turn, reduces inequalities.

The key to ensuring human wellbeing, health, and dignity is to look at human rights as a policy tool, taking a people-centric approach. States, UN agencies, international development partners, and donor agencies need to do more to safeguard the human rights to water and sanitation because this is an important objective in itself and because it is so crucial to many other human rights. Strategies to reduce inequalities in access to water and sanitation must be formulated and acted upon.

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