a(broad) perspective
No single substance is more necessary to humans than water. For people in developed countries, clean, potable water arrives with the simple turn of a faucet knob. For much of the world’s population, however, getting access to clean water is much more complex, if not impossible, and not having clean water leads to a host of diseases and conflict and is intimately tied to poverty.
In late July, the 192-member General Assembly of the United Nations adopted, without opposition (though not unanimously), a resolution on the human right to water. Specifically, the General Assembly declared that “the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights.”. The resolution notes that approximately 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that more than 2.6 billion lack access to basic sanitation. As a result, approximately 1.5 million children under the age of 5 years old die and miss 443 million school days each year.
The United States was one of 41 countries that abstained from voting. In doing so, U.S. deputy representative to the U.N Economic and Social Council John Sammis cited ongoing work of other U.N. bodies to increase access to water and asserted that the resolution “was not drafted in a transparent, inclusive manner” with no thought to the legal implications of establishing this right.
Prior to this resolution, a human right had to be implied by jumping hoops through various international human rights treaties, such as the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1996 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Political Rights, or various regional treaties. Those covenants have specific mandates and related enforcement mechanisms, namely the UN’s Human Rights Committee and other regional human rights commissions.
The new resolution does not refer to these larger international human rights texts, nor does it establish any mandates. Instead, it calls for countries to provide financial resources and other capacity and technology assistance to “scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for all.” Both this resolution and previous steps to imply a human right to water are half-steps, each containing something the other lacks but not amounting to a whole.
This resolution marks recognition by 122 countries of the human right to water, no small feat. However, whether it translates into substantive outcomes—clean water and sanitation—for communities remains to be seen.
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Yee Huang | August 23, 2010
a(broad) perspective No single substance is more necessary to humans than water. For people in developed countries, clean, potable water arrives with the simple turn of a faucet knob. For much of the world’s population, however, getting access to clean water is much more complex, if not impossible, and not having clean water leads to […]
Shana Campbell Jones | August 19, 2010
Last week, the Washington University Journal of Law and Policy published New Directions in Environmental Law, a symposium issue featuring articles from six CPR Member Scholars. The articles explore how lessons learned from first generation environmental statutes should be applied to future legislation in order to accomplish the original goals of the environmental movement. Dan […]
Yee Huang | August 18, 2010
In June, the Food and Drug Administration issued Draft Guidance on the Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobials in Food-Producing Animals. The FDA recognizes in the guidance that the “overall weight of evidence available… supports the conclusion that using medically important antimicrobial drugs for production or growth enhancing purposes… in food-producing animals is not in the […]
Holly Doremus | August 17, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. On Monday the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued a report on the NEPA analysis that preceded exploratory drilling at the ill-fated Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, together with recommendations for improving NEPA analysis in the future. According to CEQ, the Bureau of Ocean and Energy Management (successor […]
Matt Shudtz | August 13, 2010
On Wednesday, EPA announced its intention to revise (pdf) the TSCA Inventory Update Rule (IUR). The TSCA Inventory is the official list of chemicals in commerce, and the IUR is the regulation that requires companies to submit production and use data to EPA to ensure the Inventory accurately represents all of the chemicals out there. This week's […]
William Funk | August 13, 2010
In November 2008, with Riegel v. Medtronic recently decided, bills introduced into Congress to overturn its effect, and Wyeth v. Levine about to be argued in the Supreme Court, the President of the American Bar Association created a task force to review ABA policies regarding preemption of state tort law. The composition of the task force […]
Daniel Farber | August 12, 2010
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. Administrative agencies sometimes issue regulations that have the effect of overruling state law — and sometimes that is the sole effect of the regulation. This proved quite controversial during the Bush Administration, which used agency rulemaking efforts to cut back on state tort law. The ABA has a adopted a new […]
Yee Huang | August 11, 2010
In June, I wrote about a settlement between EPA and environmental groups that requires EPA to publish guidance on the implementation of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and to propose a rule to collect more information on these operations. In that post, I cited numbers from EPA […]
Ben Somberg | August 11, 2010
CPR Member Scholar Rebecca Bratspies was recently on Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview talking about oil spills in the developing world, the power of big companies in small nations, and the broader picture of resource extraction and its effects on people. Said Bratspies: “any oil company that doesn’t cut the same corners that the worst player […]