the human right to water and sanitation in emergency situations

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ANNExE 1
30 YEARS Of WASH INTERNATIONAl pOlITICAl pROGRESS IN bRIEf
Over the last thirty years a number of international conferences have marked the significant progress made
in the development of water and sanitation issues.
The International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade (1980/1990), which was declared
during the United Nations Conference on Water in Mar del Plata in Argentine 136 (1977), marked the beginning
of thirty years of international action on the topic of water. During this period, it was established that:
“All people, whatever their state of development and their economic and social situation, have the right to
access to clean drinking water of an adequate quantity and quality for their basic needs”.
The 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the UN General Assembly, includes
a commitment that States shall ensure equality of opportunity for all in their access to basic resources.
The Declaration implicitly includes water as a basic resource in that it states that the persistent conditions
of underdevelopment in which millions of humans are “denied access to such essentials as food, water,
clothing, housing and medicine in adequate measure” represent a flagrant “mass violation of human rights”.
The International Conference on Water and the Environment (ICWE, Dublin, 1992), a preparatory
conference for the first Earth Summit in Rio, laid down four basic principles:
- Water is a finite and vulnerable resource which is essential to sustain life;
- Water development and management should be based on a participatory approach, involving all
stakeholders and users;
- Women play a vital role in the provision, management and safeguarding of water;
- Water should be seen as an economic good which has an economic value for all its competing users
(agriculture, industry). However, this first conference does not deny the fact that water is a social good:
“The basic right of all human beings to have access to clean water and sanitation at an affordable price”
The first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED 1, Rio de Janeiro,
1992) 137 , the second big gathering of the international community after the Stockholm Conference 138 ,
was marked by the launch of Agenda 21 139 , a programme of action that devotes a whole chapter (Chapter
18) to the question of freshwater. It calls for the global management of freshwater and for the integration
of sectoral water plans and programmes within the framework of national economic and social policy. For
the first time, development and the environment were linked at the heart of the debate, but water still did
not figure among the priorities on the international agenda.
136/ The Mar Del Plata Conference was the first international event to sound the alarm on the global water crisis. The 150
Nations present at this Conference declared 1980-1990 the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. This
fixed an ambitious target: to supply accessible drinking water of adequate quantity and quality and set up basic structures
to the entire world’s population by the end of the decade
137/ The informal name of this conference is “Earth Summit”
138/The Stockholm Conference (1972) was the first United Nations Conference to put the environment at the heart of the
debates and which discussed the water issue. The conference also marked the establishment of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP)
139/ For more details on this matter, refer to Agenda 21’s web site: http://www.un.org/french/ga/special/sids/agenda21/
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