Today, on 28 July 2024, it will be 14 years since the 108th plenary session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted UN resolution 64/292 on the human right to water and sanitation! This was the result of a long struggle, but it was far from the end of the struggle. As Maude Barlow, co-founder of the Blue Community and a key player in getting the UN to recognise water and sanitation as a human right, wrote in her book «Whose water is it anyway?», published 2019:
Undeterred by the opposition and refusing to compromise on the language of the resolution, Ambassador Solón (Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN) challenged the General Assembly on July 28, 2010, to recognize the human right to water and sanitation as “essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life.” (…) The vote was overwhelming: 122 countries voted in favour and 41 abstained. No country actually voted nay. (…)
Every UN member state signed The Future We Want, the outcome document of the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, which reaffirmed the human right to water and sanitation. And in December 2013, the UN General Assembly tabled a resolution affirming the human right to water and sanitation again. This time, the vote was unanimous. In 2015, the General Assembly recognized water and sanitation as two distinct rights in yet another unanimously adopted resolution.
But for all the good reasons to celebrate this achievement, we are far from seeing all people as entitled to this right. Billions of people still lack access to safe water and sanitation. The fight continues for the human right to water and sanitation to be enshrined in national constitutions and laws, as only then can people truly claim their rights. The Blue Community, together with other water rights organisations, continues this struggle and invites cities and communities, universities and schools, religious organisations and trade unions, companies and NGOs, water utilities and any other institution to join our struggle by joining the global network of Blue Communities. Turn blue, become a Blue Community.
