The Human Right to Water and Sanitation
UN-Water Decade Programme on Advocacy and Communication and Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
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Media brief
The water required for personal or domestic use must be safe, therefore free from micro-organisms, chemical
substances and radiological hazards
that constitute a threat to health. Measures of drinking-water safety are
usually defined by national and/or local standards.
WHO’s Guidelines for drinking-water quality provide a basis
for the development of national standards that, if properly implemented, will ensure the safety of drinking-water.
Everyone is entitled to safe and adequate sanitation. Facilities must be situated where physical security can be
safeguarded. Ensuring safe sanitation also requires substantial hygiene education and promotion. This means
toilets must be available for use at all times of the day or night and must be hygienic; wastewater and
excreta safely disposed and toilets constructed to prevent collapse. Services must ensure privacy and water
points should be positioned to enable use for personal hygiene, including menstrual hygiene.
At any one time, close to half of all people in developing countries are suffering from health problems
caused by poor water and sanitation. […] Together, unclean water and poor sanitation are the world’s
second biggest killer of children. […] It has been calculated that 443 million school days are lost each
year to water-related illness.
UNDP. Human Development Report 2006. Beyond Scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis. 2006
The human right to water and sanitation in practice in Indonesia,
Argentina and the United States of America
Through the Indonesia Sanitation Development Program (ISSDP), an approach for promoting gender and
social equity in planning, decision-making and implementation of urban sanitation at both city and
community levels has been developed, trialled and applied. Awareness campaigns targeting the official
working group on sanitation, city sub-district officials and community groups have been effective for
ensuring women’s voices are heard by decision makers. Sessions for only women, only men and mixed
groups are considered to have complementary inputs. The awareness campaigns and feedback sessions
change perspectives by reaching a common understanding on the complementary responsibilities of men
and women in the process of realizing a safe sanitation environment. This is closely linked to dissemination
of technical options and cost information, as well as, hygiene promotion and education.
Water and Sanitation Program. Gender in the water and sanitation program. 2010
Water pollution and the lack of access to safe drinking water, and the links between the two, in poor
neighbourhoods of the city of Córdoba, Argentina, was at the centre of the Marchisio José Bautista y Otros
case. As they had no connection to public water distribution networks, these neighbourhoods relied on
groundwater wells that were heavily polluted with faecal substances and other contaminants. Furthermore,
nearby a water treatment plant had been built upstream on the river, but because of its insufficient capacity,
the plant spilt untreated sewage into the river daily. In its ruling, the District Court ordered the municipal
authorities to take urgent measures to address the situation and minimize the environmental impact of the
plant until a permanent solution for its operation was found. It also ordered them to provide 200 litres of
safe drinking water per household per day until full access to the public water services could be ensured.
UN, OHCHR, UN-Habitat, WHO. (The) Right to Water, Fact Sheet No, 35. 2010
Under the U.S. Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments of 1996, large water systems are required to provide annual
reports directly to their customers on water contaminants and related health effects. The Act stipulates that
persons served by a public water system must be notified within 24 hours of any regulatory violations that could
seriously harm human health as a result of short-term exposure. It further indicates that a State must send an
annual report to the Federal Environmental Protection Agency Administrator on violations of national drinking
water regulations by public water systems in the State and must make such report available to the public.
UN-HABITAT, COHRE, AAAS, SDC. Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation. 2007
Safe
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