Translating the Human Right to Water and Sanitation into Public Policy Reform (original) (raw)
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Implementing an evolving human right through water and sanitation policy
Water Policy, 2013
With water and sanitation vital to the public's health, there have been growing calls to accept water and sanitation as a human right and establish a rights-based framework for water policy. Through the development of international law, policymakers have increasingly specified water and sanitation as independent human rights. In this political development of human rights for water and sanitation, the authors find that the evolution of rights-based water and sanitation policy reached a milestone in the United Nations (UN) General Assembly's 2010 Resolution on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation. By memorializing international political recognition of these interconnected rights and the corresponding obligations of national governments, states provided a normative framework for expanded efforts to realize human rights through water and sanitation policy. Examining the opportunities created by this UN Resolution, this article analyzes the implementation of the human right to water and sanitation through global water governance, national water policy and water and sanitation outcomes. While obstacles remain in the implementation of this right, the authors conclude that the UN Resolution could have lasting benefits for public health. means of realizing improved public health through rights-based water and sanitation policy. In examining the development of human rights to address the public health implications of water and sanitation, this article describes the role of human rights as a normative framework for public policy, assesses the evolution of a human right to water under international law and describes the 2010 UN Resolution that now shapes a distinct human right to water and sanitation. From the seminal role of the UN Resolution, the authors analyze the prospects for implementation of this Resolution through global water governance, national water policy, and water and sanitation outcomes. Recognizing that obstacles remain at each step of implementation, the authors outline research needed to examine the process by which human rights impact water and sanitation. With increased human rights specificity facilitating human rights accountability, this article concludes that there are now enhanced opportunities for rights-based water and sanitation policy, but that additional research will be necessary to overcome obstacles in translating human rights into improvements in the public's health.
Realising the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation: A Handbook
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This Handbook is the product of six years of work by the first UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque. It explains the meaning and legal obligations that arise from these rights, translating the often complex technical and legal language into accessible information.The Handbook, which is presented across nine booklets addressing different areas of activity, is targeted towards governments at all levels, donors and national regulatory bodies. It provides information that will also be useful to other local, regional and international stakeholders, including civil society, service providers and human rights organisations.The first part of the handbook, the introduction, is available here. The other parts are available at the website: http://www.righttowater.info/handbook/#
Water, 2020
In most countries, local governments bear primary responsibility for ensuring everyone has access to water and sanitation services. For the human rights to water and sanitation to move from recognition to realisation, they need to become part of the everyday practice of local authorities. Yet the potential for the human rights to water and sanitation to practically inform local efforts towards inclusive, sustainable service delivery has received limited attention to date, with human rights discourse more typically focusing on national and international levels or on building the capacity of rights holders to claim their rights from government. There is considerable opportunity to consider how human rights can constructively inform local government efforts to expand and improve services. This Communication article presents a novel approach to making human rights relevant and actionable for local authorities. Developed by a consortium of WASH-focused organisations and informed by desig...
The human right to water and sanitation: a new perspective for public policies
The recognition of the human right to water and sanitation (HRtWS) by the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council in 2010 constituted a significant political measure whose direct consequences are still being assessed. Previous to this date, the HRtWS and its link to a healthy life and adequate standard of living had been recognised in diverse legal and judicial spheres worldwide, in some cases under the pressure of the initiatives of strong social movements. However, while the HRtWS is recognised by the UN State Members, it constitutes a concept in construction that has not been approached and interpreted in consensual ways by all concerned stakeholders. The present article presents a formal definition of this right with a base in human rights regulation. It attempts to dialogue with the different existing perspectives regarding the impact of its international recognition as a human right. It then elucidates the progressive development of the HRtWS in law and jurisprudence. Finally, it considers the urgency and challenge of monitoring the HRtWS and discusses important implications for public policies.
The Decentered Construction of Global Rights: Lessons from the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation
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Families in Flint, Michigan, protesting lead in their water, indigenous groups in the Amazon asserting control over their rivers, slum dwellers in India worried about disconnection or demanding cities bring potable water to their neighborhoods, an entire city in South Africa worried about the day when they will run out of water altogether—all these and many more have claimed the human right to water as the vehicle to express their demands. Where does this right come from, and how is its meaning constructed? In this article, we show that, in sociolegal terms, the global right to water, as are many others, is constructed out of the myriad struggles and claims of people who feel the lack of something that is essential to a dignified existence, and who cannot obtain an adequate response from their immediate political and legal environment. They do so in loose conversation with, but relatively unconstrained by, the meanings that are being constructed by the international and domestic leg...
Taking Stock of the Human Right to Water
2018
The concept of the human right to water and sanitation (HRtWS) has received increasing attention at the policy level in the form of national constitutional guarantees and UN actions, in the work of development organizations, NGOs, network actors and private sector actors. In this article, we explore how the discourse on the HRtWS from key actors in global water governance has evolved over time. Understanding the various discourses around the HRtWS can provide insights into how the HRtWS fits within larger governance trends, including development strategies and practices. We find that despite initial resistance to human rights framing among many of the actors involved in global water governance, there is a convergence on the existence of the HRtWS. Yet, contestation among actors increasingly focuses on what the right means in practice and how to implement a rights-based approach to water services. This contestation is particularly visible around what a legal HRtWS means for questions...
Analysis of experience using human rights to accelerate WASH access in four countries
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Human rights to water and sanitation have been widely recognised in legal instruments at the international, regional, and national levels of governance. More awareness of states’ obligations has provided additional impetus to promote human rights in policy advocacy. The international non-governmental organisation WaterAid, as a non-state actor specialising in the water, sanitation, and hygiene services (WASH) sector, adopts a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to WASH programming. This paper draws on the experiences from WaterAid WASH projects in four countries – Nepal, Ghana, Mali, and Burkina Faso, to evaluate the practical impacts of the HRBA to ensure that governments fulfil their responsibility to realise universal access to water and sanitation services in different contexts. The outcomes highlight that three important contributions of the HRBA: (1) generates greater awareness among rightsholders and duty bearers about responsibilities and entitlements over safe drinking water...
Flowing from the evolution of international legal obligations for water and sanitation, human rights practice has shifted to address state accountability for a human right to water and sanitation through the development of human rights indicators. This policy note focuses on efforts to develop indicators for state reporting to human rights treaty bodies, with human rights norms framing national reports and treaty bodies employing indicators to monitor the progressive realization of the human right to water and sanitation. In supporting evidence-based treaty monitoring through the United Nations (UN), both the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation have sought to develop indicators. This process of developing indicators for the human right to water and sanitation seeks to draw on previous indicator development practices, looking to these practices in framing, identifying and reviewing indicators. As part of a larger drive to facilitate rights-based accountability, there arises an imperative to study the political process of developing indicators, looking to past models in structuring future processes to assess the realization of the right to water and sanitation. Exploring the development of indicators for the human rights to health and education, this policy note analyses the indicator development process, proposing an indicator development process model as a basis for developing indicators that reflect the attributes of the right to water and sanitation, enlist key stakeholders in the policymaking process and have political relevance for state reporting to treaty bodies.
The Human Right to Water: Moving Towards Consensus in a Fragmented World
Review of European Community …, 2010
The problem of unmet water and sanitation service needs of one-sixth to one-third of humanity has been recognized by the UN General Assembly's 2010 Resolution on the human right to water and sanitation. However, this raises a number of questions. First, does the consensus within the General Assembly imply that all governance actors accept the right and the accompanying responsibilities and does it override other governance discourses dominant in the global arena? Second, why is a human rights discourse superior to other discourses used to address the above problem? Third, what are the challenges in implementing such a discourse and what are the potential solutions? This article argues that although there is growing consensus on the human right to water, the fragmentation of water governance implies that the impact of the consensus is limited. It argues further that there is a real and pressing need to discuss access issues in terms of human rights; but that given the implementation challenges, there is a more active need to move from public-private partnerships to public-nongovernmental organization partnerships.
The human rights to water and sanitation have developed dramatically under international human rights law over the past forty years, with international political declarations leading to specific state obligations. Yet despite this evolution of human rights under international law, there are few mechanisms to monitor the progressive realization of those rights in national practice. The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) Performance Index employs frontier analysis to monitor human rights to water and sanitation, across countries and over time. Tracking rates of change in water and sanitation coverage, the WaSH Performance Index allows for measurements of the progressive realization of human rights, publishing quantitative indicators reflective of the human rights to water and sanitation. Such external monitoring of outcome measures, correlating national implementation efforts with water and sanitation coverage data, provides a basis for future research and advocacy to facilitate rights-based accountability for water and sanitation policy.