Pablo Antezana Quiroga: Right to Water (Project Proposal)

Worldwide, approximately one in eight people lack potable water. The situation of lack of sanitation is far worse, for it affects 2.6 billion people, or 40% of the global population. Every year, 3 and a half million people die of waterborne illness. Diarrhea is the second largest cause of death among children under five. The lack of access to potable water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and smallpox combined. 

The right to health was originally recognized in 1946 by the World Health Organization’s Constitution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 guaranteed all people a right to a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being. Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) also recognizes “the right to an adequate standard of living”. 

In 2000, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted a General Comment that 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 water and sanitation, adequate supply of safe food, nutrition and housing, healthy working and environmental conditions, and access to health-related education and information. In 2002, the Committee further declared that water itself was an independent right, since “(…) it is one of the most fundamental conditions for survival”. 

Finally, in 2010 the General Assembly of the UN approved the resolution recognizing access to clean water and sanitation as a human right. However, the approval wasn’t unanimous and 41 countries abstained from voting (Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Israel, Turkey, Sweden, Netherlands, Republic of Korea, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand, among others).

    •    Why these differences exist?

    •    What is the importance of a rights-based approach to development?

    •    What are the challenges to states parties posed by the recognition of this right and what kind of rules should be established at the international level to ensure compliance?

    •    To what extent one country should have a right to receive water of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the minimum needs of its population from a co-riparian state, assuming such water would be available?

    •    Access to water should always be regulated by governments? (Since the challenge of supplying vast populations with this resource is almost unreachable for poor countries that lack the adequate infrastructure and financing).

    •    How could it affect the right of private companies conducting business in this sector at a local, national and international level?

    •    What are the implications for other stakeholders, including local communities?

    •    How can governments formulate the adequate public policies and regulations that could lead to the adequate enforcement of this right? 

    •    What are the lessons of the “Water War” of 2000 which took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia? 

Comments

[Michael Byers]

This is an excellent overview, but your project has to be more tightly focused if you're going to add something to the existing literature. Any of your bullet-point questions above would be sufficient for a term paper. Any more than two or three questions would be too much.

My suggestion is that you address this one:

• What are the challenges to states parties posed by the recognition of this right and what kind of rules should be established at the international level to ensure compliance?

Or this one, which is a more focused version of the same question:

• To what extent one country should have a right to receive water of sufficient quality and quantity to meet the minimum needs of its population from a co-riparian state, assuming such water would be available?

Or this collection of three, inter-related questions:

• Access to water should always be regulated by governments? (Since the challenge of supplying vast populations with this resource is almost unreachable for poor countries that lack the adequate infrastructure and financing).

• How could it affect the right of private companies conducting business in this sector at a local, national and international level?

• What are the implications for other stakeholders, including local communities?

But again, you're off to a great start!