The Human Right to Water in Law and Implementation

Abstract

Recent concerns about alleged insufficient water provision to the poor in Detroit, USA, has put the Human Right to Water (HRW) into the international discussion. The paper asks: "To what extent did international human rights treaties make HRW judiciable?" and "How did government policies implement it?" In a crosscountry comparison of performance indicators, merely accepting HRW has not been helpful in promoting affordable access to potable water or sanitation facilities close to the home, amongst the reasons being deficiencies in water-governance. Case-law confirmed that with respect to affordable access HRW obliges governments to a "progressive realization" only, also in countries accepting HRW (India, South Africa). The paper focuses on the resulting positive state obligation to establish funding programs for better water and sanitation services and analyzes funding policies by a mathematical model of policy goals. It identifies two viable goals namely the successful support for the poor, as in developing countries, and the most economic use of public funds, as in industrialized countries. Other goals conceivable for the model have been tried in the past and failed.

Sustainability Assessment for Wastewater Treatment Systems in Developing Countries

“…If poverty is a reason to deny services, there arise concerns about environmental justice. Funding institutions in the past might have put too much focus on better-off neighborhoods, because they were more likely to comply in cost sharing [77]. This could have resulted in eco-racism, where certain populations (identified by race or caste) were denied public support for resolving their environmental problems [78].…”

“…Using this approach, a revenue maximizing tax may be estimated [77]. However, owing to the above-mentioned uncertainties, different distribution assumptions about CDF may be used for modeling.…”

Right to Water and Courts in Brazil: How Do Brazilian Courts Rule When They Frame Water as a Right?

“…Haglund found that "the vast majority of judges handed down rulings that reflected a substantive view of state responsibility to ensure that basic human rights are respected where poverty is present, despite the formal contractual legality of cut-offs". Other studies indicate that disconnections of the poor for non-payment of water-bills were unlawful in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela [16,27,34]. Leo Heller, the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Water and Sanitation (2014-2020), argues that "water cuts due to economic disability to pay are strictly prohibited in the human rights framework, as they constitute a stepping stone, therefore, incompatible with the principle of progressive realisation of rights" [35] (our translation).…”

Affordability of Decentralized Wastewater Systems: A Case Study in Integrated Planning from INDIA

“…To a large extent, the sanitation problems were due to irregular urbanization. However, large-scale demolitions of the slums would have been unlawful [52]. Hence, the municipalities were responsible to either relocate the slum dwellers to alternative To investigate factors that may affect WTP, authors avoided to use conventional regression analysis, as this would be a data-hungry exercise.…”

“…To a large extent, the sanitation problems were due to irregular urbanization. However, large-scale demolitions of the slums would have been unlawful [52].…”