MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work

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Further information
The rights to health, food and water
Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family.
Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate
standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food …. The States Parties
will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect
the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.
Article 11, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment
of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.
Article 12, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The right to health was recognised as early as 1946, when the Constitution of the World
Health Organization (WHO) stated that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of
health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being.
In 2000, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the covenant’s
supervisory body, adopted a general comment on the right to health that interprets the right to
health as enshrined in Article 12 of the covenant. This General Comment interprets the right
to health as an inclusive right that extends not only to timely and appropriate health care
but also to those factors that determine good health. These include access to safe drinking
water and adequate sanitation, a sufficient supply of safe food, nutrition and housing, healthy
occupational and environmental conditions, and access to health-related education and
information.
In 2002, the committee further recognised that water itself was an independent right. Drawing
on a range of international treaties and declarations, it stated:
The right to water clearly falls within the category of guarantees essential for securing an
adequate standard of living, particularly since it is one of the most fundamental conditions
for survival.
Source: www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/rightowater/en
Human rights and the right to environmental protection
In parts of the Euro-Mediterranean region, as in all other parts of the world, there are people
facing acute water shortages, declining fish supplies, deforestation, pollution and other environmental
disasters. The victims of these disasters include animals and wildlife as well. More
often than not, the humans who are affected are those least able to defend themselves: the
poor, the disadvantaged and the marginalised.
The issues of human rights and environmental protection come together in a world that manages
to protect and nurture both human and non-human life in a sustainable way. It is increasingly
obvious that the questions of environmental degradation and human rights violations are
heavily interdependent, and an understanding of the common issues can only help our efforts
to work on each of them.
For more on the links between environmental rights and the European Convention, see Daniel
García San José, Environmental protection and the European Convention on Human Rights,
available at http://book.coe.int/. The Declaration on the United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment (the Stockholm declaration) is at:
www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=97&ArticleID=1503)
MOSAIC - The training kit for Euro-Mediterranean youth work