Cleanwaterforum: Clean Water for Life: Is access to clean water a basic human right?

Cleanwaterforum : A forum to discuss how to achieve universal access to safe, physically accessible, sufficient and affordable, clean water.

We set up this blog to discuss issues surrounding universal access to safe, physically accessible, sufficient and affordable clean water. These issues include, but are not limited to: 1) whether access to clean water should be enshrined as a fundamental human right; 2) how to respond to the increasingly prevalent treatment of water as a commodity rather than a public good (corporate social responsibility and water); 3) clean water as global health issue; 4) clean water as a poverty issue; 5) clean water as a global security issue; 6) clean water as a gender issue.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Is access to clean water a basic human right?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0319/p06s01-woeu.html

With the backdrop of the World Water Forum in Istanbul, this piece in the Christian Science Monitor rasies the question we've been dealing with on the cleanwaterblog - is access to clean water a basic human right?

The CSM is reporting that, " A declaration to be signed by the ministers of some 120 countries attending the forum is expected to refer to access to water as a "basic need," rather than a right."

But business seems to be ahead of the state parties with some (like the the AquaFed) espousing that there is a _right_ to water: "There is absolutely no conflict between the right to water and the private sector. Our industry supports the right to water," says Gerard Payen, president of AquaFed, an international federation of some 200 private water operators operating in over 30 countries