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Water and Rights

Established in 2007, the Cluster Group on Water and Rights explores how human rights can help improve access to water and sanitation.

The Cluster Group gathers different perspectives, raises awareness, exchanges experience and draws on international lessons learned about challenges related to implementing the right to water and sanitation in practice.

The Group promotes a constructive dialogue on what the right to water entails for Swedish and international actors.

Resources

• General Comment No. 15 of the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Sub-Commission's Guidelines for the Realization of the Right to Drinking Water and Sanitation adopted by the UN Sub-Commission for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, August 2006
• OHCHR, WHO, COHRE, CESR, Water Aid, The Right to Water, 2003
• OHCHR Report on the scope and content of the relevant human rights obligations related to equitable access to safe drinking water and sanitation under international human rights instruments
• UNDP, Human Development Report 2006: Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis
• COHRE, Manual on Right to Water
• COHRE, Sanitation a Human Rights Imperative
Emilie Filmer-Wilson, The Human Rights Based Approach to Development - The Right to Water, Netherlands Human Rights Quarterly, 2005

Outcome

We welcomes Sweden’s decision to stand behind the resolution on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation that the UN Human Rights Council adopted unanimously 24th March 2011.

The lack of water and safe sanitation yearly reaps 2,4 million human lives that could easily have been saved. The UN has clearly stated for several years that the lack of access to water and sanitation presents an obstacle to an adequate standard of living in accordance with human rights.

 "The fact that access to safe drinking water and sanitation now is seen as a human right will not change the situation overnight, but it is an important tool and a step in the right direction to start settling the problem" said Mr. Ander Berntell, Executive Director of SIWI.
By renewing and upgrading the mandate for a UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, yesterday’s resolution shows that this human right has the same status as other human rights. The fact that Sweden stands behind the resolution can also be seen as a success for a range of Swedish civil society organisations that have worked with the issue, for example within the framework of the Swedish Water House cluster group on water and rights since 2007.