A young Sudanese boy carries water home for his family in a plastic container. Credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Esmee Russell
LONDON, May 22 2015 (IPS)

In September, the United Nations will agree on new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will set development priorities for the next 15 years. The draft goals that have been developed are ambitious – they seek to end poverty and ensure no one is left behind.

Until now, civil society has been engaged in discussions over goals and targets; through national consultations and U.N. hearings. As End Water Poverty (EWP), a global civil society coalition of over 280 organisations worldwide, we campaigned for a post-2015 world where we see the end of inherent systemic inequalities and the full realisation of the human right to water and sanitation.A participatory approach is essential as it leads to effective and sustainable interventions based on the real needs of communities.

Through these opportunities, Member States heard our call; that water and sanitation is a fundamental aspect of all development and a key priority to address in order to improve our future. Together as a united civil society, we achieved securing a dedicated water and sanitation goal – goal 6 – and welcome this progressive advancement.

However, there is still much work to be done. The only way to make this goal an achievable global reality is to have effective, inclusive indicators that can be monitored. This critical need has not been met.

To date, the discussions around indicators have been led by technical experts behind closed doors, without input from other stakeholders. The voice of civil society has not been heard.

This is despite the United Nations stating the setting of the post-2015 agenda will be fully inclusive of all stakeholders. The time to act is now. Civil society have to stand united to call for a positive future; one that prioritises improving the lives of those most in need.

EWP is calling to ensure that space is created for civil society to be an important contributor in these processes, particularly in the critical stage of developing indicators.

A participatory approach is essential as it leads to effective and sustainable interventions based on the real needs of communities.

We must hold the U.N. accountable to fulfil its promise that the next development framework will be fully inclusive, as so far, the indicator process is reneging on that promise. Being asked to meetings is not enough; civil society’s participation cannot be tokenistic inclusion.

We are also calling for specific and necessary changes to the draft indicators, to ensure that they are sufficient to truly measure governments’ delivery on their commitments.

Civil society have serious concerns about the current drafts tabled, as they are insufficient to truly measure whether people have access to safe, affordable and equitable water and sanitation.

These draft indicators do not go far enough to ensure the full implementation of the human right to water and sanitation.

This is why EWP member Freshwater Action Network- Mexico (FAN-Mex) will be attending the upcoming informal interactive hearings on the post-2015 development framework held by the U.N. General Assembly from May 26 to 27.

We need to ensure that these processes are fully inclusive of civil society’s voice and that our future agenda is based on a human rights approach; that no one is left behind, and that ending poverty and tacking inherent systemic inequalities are of fundamental priority for our future.

The global crisis of water and sanitation is not caused by scarcity or population size. It is a political crisis, of unequal and unfair distribution determined by money, power and influence. This needs to change.

The two day hearings ahead will see representatives of civil society, major groups and the private sector offered a critical opportunity for deeper engagement in the post-2015 development agenda.

We have to use this opportunity to call for the change we need, to reprioritise the importance of improved access to water and sanitation.

We feel that particularly for goal 6, additional indicators are required which will monitor access to safe and equitable water and sanitation in schools and health centres, and that civil society is involved in the monitoring of the indicators.

For us, it is most critical that indicators will need to be disaggregated. This is to ensure that disparities and inequalities in progress are made visible, to prevent the poorest and most marginalised from being left behind.

EWP will be highlighting that the current draft indicators will not direct government action towards those who need it the most, the vulnerable and marginalised. Therefore, if left as is, they will simply replicate some of the failures of the MDGs.

To reinforce this call and amplify our voice, simultaneously next week EWP members, alongside other civil society representatives, will be attending AfricaSan 4 in Senegal, a cross-continental meeting to assess levels of access to sanitation.

“Governments must work harder to meet their obligations on water and sanitation and improve people’s lives. Africa in particular has a very poor track record in ensuring sufficient access to sanitation; this needs to change to address major inequalities,” Samson Shivaji CEO at Kenya Water and Sanitation CSOs Network (KEWASNET), an EWP member stated.

Civil society must have a voice in setting our future and call to prioritise sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene. We must ensure the human right to water and sanitation is realised for all. There is an urgency to prioritise improving people’s lives, with no one left behind, and the time is now.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Water is supplied by the military in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Dilip Surkar
AHMEDABAD, India, Sep 20 2014 (IPS)

It was a dramatic moment at the United Nations when it voted in 2010 to affirm water and sanitation as a human right.

Then Bolivian ambassador to the U.N., Pablo Solon, shocked the silent auditorium with a devastating reminder of the consequences a lack of access to safe, available and affordable water and sanitation have on human life – every 21 seconds, a child dies of a water-borne disease.The shameful events in Detroit, when thousands of the poorest inhabitants of the U.S. city were disconnected from their water supply this summer after being unable to pay their bills, brought the failure to realise the human right to water and sanitation into sharp relief.

This key moment at the U.N. – which hosts its General Assembly next week – marked the beginning of a diplomatic process through which the need for states to progressively realise the human right to water and sanitation, and all the standards and principles it entails, became an obligation for member states.

Now, four years on, governments around the world are coming together to finalise the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which will guide official development policy and processes for the next 15 years.

However, while there has been recognition of the centrality of water and sanitation to development through its standalone goal, there has been a palpable reluctance from many – though not all – governments to firmly state the realisation of the human right to water and sanitation as a SDG target.

Mirroring this at national level, there is an equally distinct lack of movement in the recognition of the right in constitutions and legislation. And in many cases where it is recognised, a few bright spots aside, rights have failed to become a reality.

Rights vs reality

In the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector, the framework of access has come to dominate. For those unfamiliar with the human right and its legal obligations, it is a perfectly reasonable call – for everyone to have access to water and sanitation.

But everyone has a human right to water and sanitation that is not only accessible, but universally available, safe and affordable and in addition to this for sanitation, acceptable.

Reducing our demand for water and sanitation to access alone hinders the fulfilment of these all important standards of the human right, while it also puts out of focus human rights principles such as opposing discrimination, ensuring participation, equality and accountability, among others.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reduced our monitoring of water to access alone, with no measure for its sustainability. While having a tap would be a step up for many millions, as anyone living without water as a daily reality could attest, a tap, standpipe or other means of accessing water does not mean water is consistently available from it, nor that it is safe or affordable.

By the measure of access alone, the MDG on water has already been achieved. Figures from the World Health Organisation and Unicef’s Joint Monitoring Programme suggest that 748 million people now lack access to water – between 1990 and 2012, 2.3 billion people gained access to ‘improved drinking water sources’.

But, as research has demonstrated, increase the complexity of this measure to safe water and the figure balloons: some 1.8 billion people are thought to lack access to safe water.

The shameful events in Detroit, when thousands of the poorest inhabitants of the U.S. city were disconnected from their water supply this summer after being unable to pay their bills, brought the failure to realise the human right to water and sanitation into sharp relief: in the world’s richest economy, people can be left, essentially, to die, removed in a discriminatory manner from the sustenance of life-giving water.

“Disconnections due to non-payment are only permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying,” said U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, who was joined by the rapporteurs on housing and extreme poverty in condemning the USA.

“In other words, when there is genuine inability to pay, human rights simply forbids disconnections.”

In Kenya, one of the very few countries where the human right to water and sanitation is embedded in the constitution, rights remain far from reality, with patterns visible across the world replicated in microcosm – the poor pay more for their water than the rich.

“I call upon the authorities to take immediate measures to enforce and monitor the official tariffs for water kiosks. This is crucial to correct the systematic pattern of the poor paying much more for water from kiosks than the rich for water from pipes,”said de Albuquerque.

“The rights to water and sanitation should not remain a dream for so many. These rights are recognised in the Kenyan Constitution itself,” she went on.

What is to be done?

At End Water Poverty, the world’s biggest water and sanitation coalition with more than 275 members, we decided at the beginning of the year to reframe our “Keep Your Promises” campaign to focus on the human right to water and sanitation.

This means that at a national level we will support our members in demanding that the right is recognised, and where it is already recognised, that it is realised.

This means all the standards and principles of the right are adhered to; it means that in situations of water scarcity the state must meet people’s needs, whether for drinking, cooking, washing or hygiene, as a first priority; and it means governments must use the maximum available resources in a non-discriminatory manner to realise the right.

At an international level, it means the SDGs must adopt the realisation of the right as a target. Do governments intend to regress on international human rights law they created? Do they not want provision of water and sanitation to be framed by non-discrimination? Or for sanitation to be framed by privacy, dignity and cultural acceptability?

As then U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said last year on the SDG process, development efforts must be directed to the realisation of human rights:

“This has been so central to the demands of people from all regions that we can now confidently assert that the extent to which it is reflected in the new framework, will in large measure, determine its illegitimacy.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Water is supplied by the military in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Credit: UN Photo/Kibae Park

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 6 2014 (IPS)

A U.N. working group mandated to formulate a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the post-2015 development agenda is being accused of bypassing water and sanitation as a basic human right: a right long affirmed in a General Assembly resolution adopted back in July 2010.

A letter of protest signed by 77 non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including Biofuel Watch, Blue Planet Project, Corporate Accountability International and End Water Poverty Coalition, says: “We are deeply disappointed to find the reference to the human right to water and sanitation has been removed from the Working Document” for the current session of Open Working Group (OWG), which began Monday."This confirms a broader concern by civil society organisations that human rights have been marginalised within the SDG framework." -- Meera Karunananthan

The protest is being led and coordinated by the Mining Working Group, a coalition of NGOs which promotes human and environmental rights worldwide.

Meera Karunananthan of the Canada-based Blue Planet Project told IPS, “The United Nations must not commit to a development agenda that does not further human rights.

“We will be talking to member states to demand that they champion a human rights-based approach to the SDGs,” she added.

Esmee Russell, international campaign coordinator for End Water Poverty, told IPS her organisation calls upon the OWG not to backtrack on history and to enshrine the human rights to water and sanitation as underpinning all water and sanitation SDG targets and indicators, as well as the SDG framework as a whole.

The NGO coalition is also making a strong push for a “stand-alone goal” for water and sanitation in the proposed SDGs (which did not achieve that singular status in the Millennium Development Goals ending 2015).

Asked to identify any groups or countries opposed to this proposal, Russell said it is really positive to see that over 57 countries have already publicly shown their support for a stand-alone water and sanitation goal, and hopefully more countries will continue to do so.

“But our concern is that China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan stated in the Open Working Group’s last 10th session that water and sanitation should be addressed through ‘access’ rather than a ‘rights-based’ approach,” she said.

End Water Poverty believes that such an approach may ultimately fail many of those still in need of water and sanitation, she added.

Comprising a core group of some 30 member states representing various regional groups, the OWG has held 10 sessions since March 2013.

The current 11th negotiating sessions, May 5-9, will be followed by two more sessions in June and July – and perhaps continue into early next year.

The new SDGs are expected to be adopted at a summit meeting of world leaders in September 2015.

In its letter of protest addressed to U.N. ambassadors, the NGO coalition says it is crucial the SDG process guarantee the progressive realisation of the human right to water and sanitation now and for future generations.

Given the critical role of water within a number of different SDG areas, “it is vital that the human right to water be seen as a central component of other focus areas including energy, food, gender and climate change.”

With 780 million people lacking access to clean drinking water and two billion without adequate sanitation, the letter says, the water and sanitation crisis is one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time.

Every year, 3.6 million people die from waterborne diseases, which can be avoided.

In addition to access to water and sanitation services, Karunananthan told IPS, “We want targets dealing with water resource management to be based in a human rights approach in order to ensure that human needs are prioritised over industrial consumption and that non-commercial water users such as subsistence farmers and landless communities are not marginalised within water resource management strategies that are deemed environmentally sustainable.”

She also pointed out that water and sanitation remains a target within the focus area document and there has been a lot of support for a stand-alone water goal from a variety of sources.

But the latest version no longer contains any reference to the human right to water.

“This confirms a broader concern by civil society organisations that human rights have been marginalised within the SDG framework,” she said.

A human rights-based approach would ensure that marginalised communities are prioritised, it would ensure accountability and recourse in instances of violations, she added.

Karunanthan also said the process relating to the current Millennium Development Goals “showed us that numerical targets alone do not ensure this.”

Russell told IPS that in discussions to date, the importance of access to water and sanitation has been referenced – and the need for a stand-alone goal was clearly stated in the high-level panel report.

And the OWG has kept water and sanitation as a “stand-alone focus area” in their recently published focus areas for post-2015.

“While this is positive, we are concerned about the framing of that focus area which now contains no reference to human rights to water and sanitation,” she said.

It is essential that the human rights to water and sanitation underpin this focus area because it requires an explicit focus on the most disadvantaged and marginalised, as well as an emphasis on participation, empowerment, accountability and transparency, she added.

Asked if she was hopeful the current campaign will succeed, Russell told IPS that over 1.1 million people, many of whom are directly affected by the lack of access to water and sanitation, have signed End Water Poverty’s petition calling for a water and sanitation goal – “And we are hopeful that the United Nations and member Governments will respond positively to such a strong and clear demand from citizens.”

The now landless family of Abdusattar Jaman (holding umbrella). Credit: Robert Stefanicki/IPS.

By Robert Stefanicki
KHULNA, Bangladesh, Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

It has been four years since Cyclone Aila struck Bangladesh, triggering floods and widespread destruction. But the villagers of Koira subdistrict, among the worst affected of the 11 districts hit by the cyclone, are yet to recover from its impact.

The Jaman family was among the 41,043 families in Koira affected by Aila. Like most of their neighbours, they remained homeless for eight months, surviving on supplies from humanitarian organisations.

Some 23,820 houses were totally damaged in Koira. When the waters receded, the government gave them 20,000 taka (260 dollars) each to build a new house.“We experience all natural disasters except perhaps a volcanic eruption: cyclones, floods, droughts, even earthquakes."

The Jamans used the money to build three cottages of clay, wood and corrugated sheets. But the family has no illusions; they know the next cyclone, which will hit them sooner or later from the Bay of Bengal 20 km away, will blow their new dwellings away again. Only the brick houses of the rich will survive.

But that is not their immediate concern. More worrying is the lack of a stable income. The Jamans are among the 40 percent of Bangladesh’s 155 million people who live below the poverty line. Before, it was a hand-to-mouth existence, but they never went hungry. Koira being an agricultural region, people could make a living off the land; the landless were employed by the farmers. In times of crisis, the poor could count on help from their more affluent neighbours.

Aila changed all that. Not only were 502 acres of crops destroyed in Koira, according to the damage summary by the local UNO office, but the cyclone left the fields waterlogged for three years. Now, since the water has receded, the soil has become salinated, allowing nothing to grow.

The newly pauperised rich therefore are no longer willing to share with their neighbours. Nor do they employ them in their barren fields any more.

“Before Aila, I had a garden here in my yard, so thick that the sunlight could not penetrate,” Shafiqul Islam tells IPS. The garden wilted because of the cyclone and the salinity.

Islam is the local representative of the ruling Awami League and “rich” by local standards, because he owns a brick house. But there is nothing remarkable about his three huts, covered with rusty metal and cane.

According to Islam, around 40,000 of Koira’s 193,000 people migrated after Aila, of whom a quarter are now back.

Among those who left are the three brothers of his neighbour, Robiul Islam, who stayed behind in the village with his mother and five-year-old son.

Robiul Islam drives a rented rickshaw, earning 80 taka a day (one dollar). His ambition? To earn 200 taka (2.5 dollars) a day. That is how much a five kilo bag of rice costs, which the family consumes in two days.

Besides, 200 taka is what Robiul’s brothers, all rickshaw pullers too, earn in the city. After the cyclone, they moved to Khulna, a three-hour drive away.

IPS visited a few refugees from Koira there. They live in the suburbs, in huts like the ones they have left behind, each accommodating four people. The rent is 200 taka per month.

Most men drive rickshaws and earn enough to be able to send money back home. One of them, Abdullah, tells IPS he sends 1,500-2,000 taka every month to his parents in Koira.

Hafeeza, on the other hand, is the poor among the poor. She cooks for the rickshaw pullers, earning 200 taka like them – but in a month. She says it is enough for her and her seven-year-old son. “At least, I do not have to pay for accommodation or food,” she tells IPS.

Back in Koira, the villagers say they do not know about climate change, never mind that Bangladesh ranks first in the world in terms of vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, according to German Watch’s Global Climate Risk Index.

“We experience all natural disasters except perhaps a volcanic eruption: cyclones, floods, droughts, even earthquakes,” says M.D. Shamsudoha, head of the Centre for Participatory Research and Development, a Dhaka-based NGO.

“After each natural disaster, 50,000-60,000 people migrate to cities, but the perpetual migration is not included in the statistics,” Shamsudoha tells IPS.

Experts expect about 250 million climate refugees globally by 2050. Of these, 20-30 million will be from Bangladesh.

Politicians and environmental experts associated with the government claim they are well-prepared to fight the effects of climate change. The country, they stress, was the first among the least developed countries to adopt a national strategy on climate change in 2009.

But local NGOs are sceptical. The government, they say, is good at formulating policies, but not at implementing them.

According to Shamsudoha, the state funds mostly large-scale projects, like the construction of coastal embankments and shelters or reforestation, while priority should be given to local development and adaptation. There are enough such programmes in risk areas, they say, but they do not address the scale of the problem.

Among the inventions tested by some NGOs and U.N. agencies are ‘disaster-resistant villages’, ‘floating solar-powered schools’ and “multi-tasked flood shelters’.

Bangladeshi scientists have also developed a variety of rice resistant to moderate salinity. But according to forecasts, cereal production in Bangladesh will fall by 32 percent by 2050. And the population of the country will grow by 130 million people.

Many farmers, instead of waiting for the saltwater to leave their fields, have taken to lucrative shrimp farming. The poor, however, lack the necessary capital for investment. Besides, shrimp farming spells another disaster for them: saltwater from the shrimp ponds seeps into the adjacent fields.

Shrimp also does not contribute to food security in the primarily rice-and-dal (lentil pulp) country. Yet, more and more farmers are selling their paddy fields to shrimp or mango cultivators – and leaving for the cities. They do not have any other option.

More than 768 million people are without safe drinking water. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 10 2013 (IPS)

Just 17 years from now, nearly half the global population could be facing water scarcity, with demand outstripping supply by 40 percent.

“We must address unsustainable use,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon declared earlier this week at the Budapest water summit in Hungary. “This is the International Year of Water Cooperation. And we need joint efforts to guarantee a fair share for people and the planets essential ecosystems.”

As 2013 draws to a close, the world body itself is getting mixed reviews on the progress made in a more than decade-long effort to resolve the world’s water and sanitation problems.

The numbers remain staggering: more than 768 million people are without safe drinking water and over 2.5 billion without adequate sanitation worldwide.

But neither of the demands is expected to be met fully when the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – primarily to reduce and eradicate extreme poverty and hunger – reach their 2015 deadline.

Barbara Frost, chief executive of WaterAid, told IPS the MDG target for drinking water – reducing by half the number of people lacking one of the world’s finite resources – has been met globally.

“And the U.N. and its agencies should be rightly praised for their major contribution to this achievement,” she said.

Still, many African nations, and the African region as a whole, are off-track in meeting this commitment to their people, she added.

Last month, a petition with more than one million signatures was delivered to world leaders who were in New York for the General Assembly, urging them to amplify the global need for access to safe sanitation and drinking water – “basic human rights that millions of people are dying to obtain every day.”

The petition was created by a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including WaterAid, and led by End Water Poverty.

The signatures came mostly from South Asia (670,000) and Africa (180,000) – two regions that have some of the lowest levels of access to sanitation and water.

“Every signature collected offered an opportunity to inform and educate people to their rights as well as highlight the commitments that have been made by governments to improve access,” Frost said.

According to the U.N. chief, water holds the key to sustainable development.

“We need it for health, food security and economic progress. Yet, each year brings new pressures,” Ban said Tuesday.

Ban said water is wasted and poorly used by all sectors in all countries. That means all sectors in all countries must cooperate for sustainable solutions.

“We must use what we have more equitably and wisely. We cannot expect governments to do this alone,” he added.

Danielle Nierenberg, co-founder of Food Tank, told IPS while the world has been able to meet the MDG of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, there are still some the 768 million people who don’t have clean water.

“That’s roughly twice the population of the United States,” she pointed out.

Nierenberg said much more needs to be done to ensure that clean water gets to the people who need it the most – in places like Haiti, Bangladesh, Niger, and other countries, where not only clean water is scarce, but also adequate nutrition is non-existent.

Research organisations, governments, and the funding and donor communities need to put more investment in making sure agriculture – which makes up 70 percent of water use – conserves water, she said.

“Until the world invests in innovations – agroforestry, cover cropping, more efficient irrigation, and other practices – we won’t be able to make sure everyone has access to clean water,” she said.

The solutions are out there, they just need more attention, more research, and ultimately more funding and investment, she stressed.

In July 2010, the General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring water and sanitation a basic human right.

Asked what progress has been made since then, Frost of WaterAid told IPS the latest figures show that between 2010 and 2011 nearly 100 million people gained access to water while over 70 million gained access to sanitation.

“While much of this progress has been taken up through similar increases in population, we should acknowledge that these services are being provided in large numbers to those who don’t have,” she said.

Recognition by the General Assembly has also been important for those who do not have formal rights to the homes and land that they live on – like the over 800 million living in slum areas, Frost noted.

The right to water and sanitation has given these communities a counterweight with which they can argue more forcefully that they should still have their right to water and sanitation realised through the provision of these services, she added.

Frost said in order to ensure that everyone, everywhere has access to safe water and sanitation, the U.N.’s post-2015 development agenda must include a specific goal and the enabling targets for universal access to these basic but essential services by 2030.

Without everyone, everywhere having the essential access to water and sanitation, the dream of eradicating poverty in our lifetimes, will remain just that, a dream, she said.