Everyone needs reliable access to water. None of us can live without it. The United Nations recognizes the right to water and sanitation as a human right for all.
The right to water protects all people’s access to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use. The right to sanitation protects all people’s physical and affordable access to sanitation that is hygienic, safe, dignified, and culturally appropriate.
It is important to acknowledge physical proximity itself does not solely protect these rights. The right to water and sanitation is not protected for all if a local water source is expensive, unreliable, unhygienic, unsafely located, inaccessible for different abilities, or does not provide the necessary cultural accommodations. All people are entitled to water and sanitation without discrimination. For many marginalized groups around the world, including women, children, refugees, migrants, disabled peoples, this is not the case.
The right to water is an internationally recognized human right that is derived from Article 25 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights which requires an “adequate standard of living.” In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution on the human right to water and sanitation, affirming it as a requirement for the enjoyment of life and the fulfillment of all other human rights.
General Comment No. 15 by the Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, outlined five key elements of the right to water and sanitation that are necessary for its implementation.
- Availability: The given water supply must be sufficient for both personal and domestic use and there must be a certain number of facilities within a vicinity to each household, and every public space, educational or work facility.
- Accessibility: Water and sanitation facilities must be physically accessible for all members of the population.
- Affordability: Water facilities must be affordable for all, and cannot be denied based on ability to pay.
- Quality: Water must be safe to drink and use for personal and domestic purposes:
- Acceptability: All water facilities must be appropriate and culturally acceptable for a given population.
Case Studies
Standing Rock Sioux & Dakota Access Pipeline Protests: Water is Life
In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) was approved for construction with the purpose of transporting crude oil from Western North Dakota to Illinois. The proposed route of this pipeline was set to run just upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and indigenous community under Lake Oahe, a local reservoir. The pipeline presents numerous risks of leakage and disrupting the communities’ water supply and their culturally sacred sites as a sovereign nation.
Beginning in April 2016, youth from the Standing Rock community and other indigenous activists around the country began organizing a series of protests related to pipeline construction which included sit-ins and other obstruction measures. Conflicts between pipeline construction and protests began in fall 2016 when privately owned land was bulldozed, and militarized police were deployed to disperse encampments. In 2017, police cleared and arrested the final groups of protestors. The pipeline became fully operational in 2017.
The scale of the Standing Rock Movement was unparalleled. While the cause ultimately lost in court, the youth-led movement grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century. People travelled around the country to support the youth-led movement both indigenous and non-indigenous allies. The cause was presented in front of the United Nations Human Rights Council. The success of this movement is not solely defined by the court case, but by how it elevated indigenous sovereignty and validity of youth movements.
To learn more, you can read the book, ‘Our History Is the Future’ page, about the youth-led movement, written by Nick Estes
Flint Water Crisis
After the City of Flint changed its municipal water source as a cost saving measure, residents started to complain about the color, taste, and smell of the water. In October 2015, a local pediatrician made the awful discovery that tens of thousands of Flint’s children had been exposed to dangerously high levels of lead through the drinking water, threatening their health, growth, and neurological development.
In Flint, the federal state, and local government failed in its duties to respect, protect and fulfill the right to water for Flint residents. Due to government action and inaction the availability, quality, accessibility, and affordability requirements of the right to water were violated (Article 25 of the UDHR).
Quality: Contaminated water threatened the health and life of Flint’s more than 100,000 residents and Flit kids were exposed to lead poisoning with lifelong consequences.
Accessibility: Water accessibility decreased when residents could not safely use tap water at home, school, or work.
Affordability: Water became unaffordable. Flint’s disproportionately poor population had to pay disproportionately high rates for unusable water, and were forced to rely on bottled water and water filters to remove contaminants from unsafe municipal water.
Availability: The availability of safe water was insufficient to meet the personal and household needs of Flint families.
But the water crisis wasn’t just about poisoned water. Flint residents were poisoned by government policy decisions made by a series of unelected emergency financial managers who were appointed by Michigan’s Governor in violation of the democratic political rights of Flint citizens. When Governor Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager to Flint, he overturned a democratic election, denying Flint citizens their right to choose their political representatives, removing the political authority of duly elected local officials, and eliminating the system of democratic accountability between constituents and elected officials. This was an injustice and a violation of Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees all people the right to participate in political governance either directly or through freely chosen representatives.
The Flint water crisis shows us how human rights are interdependent and that the violation of one human rights can cause the violation of others.