Right to safe drinking water for all

This July, as the world was preparing to celebrate eleven years of ‘Human Right to Water’- recognized by the UN – an investigation into detention camps in Libya made some shocking revelations that would shame the civilized world. Refugees and migrants are being forced to trade sex for water, the Amnesty International report found out!
The report reads: In the first half of 2021, more than 7000 people intercepted at sea were forcibly returned to Al-Mabani. Detainees held there told Amnesty International they faced torture and other ill-treatment, cruel and inhuman detention conditions, extortion and forced labour. Some also reported being subjected to invasive, humiliating and violent strip-searches.
Former detainees there said that guards raped women and some were coerced into sex in exchange for their release or for essentials such as clean water. “Grace” said she was heavily beaten for refusing to comply with such a demand: “I told (the guard) no. He used a gun to knock me back. He used a leather soldier’s shoe … to (kick) me from my waist,” said
the report.
The Human Rights Watch reported in 2016 that migrants and refugees rescued off the coast of Libya are not escaping death; instead, many of them are suffering a slow death in Libya’s 18 detention centres. These centres, managed by the Interior Ministry Department for Combating Illegal Migration (DCIM), are currently holding about 3500 people from all over Africa, including neighbouring countries like Egypt and Tunisia.

Growing refugee crisis & curtailed rights

Refugees and migrants are growing in huge numbers all across the world. There are approximately 80 million displaced people in the world, of which about 26.3 million are refugees: people displaced from their own country. Remaining 45.7 million are internally displaced people due to various reasons. The number of refugees is growing steadily over the last decade.
All of these refugees are entitled to their right to a dignified life, and that includes safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. International human rights conventions and instruments spell out that asylum seekers and refugees are entitled to all the rights and fundamental freedoms.
Access to justice – in real terms – means people can go before the courts to demand their rights to be protected, regardless of their economic, social, political, migratory, racial, or ethnic status or their religious affiliation, gender identity, or sexual orientation. However, in war torn and conflict zones, the victims hardly have support systems. In fact, vulnerable people could suffer even for a so called cooperation effort between nations. The Amnesty report testifies this.
“The fresh evidences of harrowing violations, including sexual violence, against men, women and children intercepted while crossing the Mediterranean Sea and forcibly returned to detention centres in Libya, highlights the horrifying consequences of Europe’s ongoing cooperation with Libya on migration and border control”, said the report. The detention centres are being run by Libya’s interior ministry but that has not helped in abating the horror they have been forced to.
European Union lawmakers, civil society groups and others have been asking the European Commission to stop the cooperation with Libran coastguard as the country was not safe for disembarkation of people rescued at sea.

War situations and right to water

As the world urbanises faster, the nature of wars and conflicts are also changing. Battles are increasingly fought in population centres, primarily as a result of the prevalence of non-international armed conflicts between states and non-state armed groups. A 2018 report of the UN and the World Bank has to say, “Violent conflicts today have become complex and protracted, involving more non-state groups and regional and international actors, often linked to global challenges from climate change to transnational organized crime. It is increasingly recognized as an obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030”. Major violent conflicts have tripled in number since 2010.
The war and conflict situations lead to several kind of problems for the vulnerable groups. Water, sanitation & hygiene (WASH) infrastructure get badly impacted, curtailing thereby the right of the people to these lifesaving services. A latest UNICEF report says, “Even the most resilient water and sanitation systems can fail in the face of attacks, leaving previously realized development gains among the rubble. Millions of children around the world suffer the worst consequences of armed conflict, paying a steep and unjust price when parties to conflict fail to respect and protect
essential services”.
“Not only are children in extremely fragile contexts, often more than eight times worse off across WASH indicators than children born into a stable, protected and developed country context”, says the
report further.
Damaged WASH infrastructure and services leads to a cycle of problems for the children and their families. Their health, nutrition, education get severely affected and they are denied their right to life, growth and happiness. Conflicting parties hardly recognise such rights. In a world that is still struggling to meet the water and sanitation targets for population in normal situations, these conflict and war zones hardly get the attention
they deserve.

Ensuring right to water against all odds

Deeply concerned by the fact that approximately 884 million people lacked access to safe drinking water and that more than 2.6 billion did not have access to basic sanitation, and alarmed that approximately 1.5 million children under 5 years of age died and 443 million school days were lost each year as a result of water- and sanitation-related diseases, the United Nations (UN), in its General Assembly on July 28, 2010, adopted a resolution recognizing the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all
human rights.
The UN acknowledged the importance of equitable access to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as an integral component of the realization of all human rights. It also reaffirmed that it is the responsibility of states for the promotion and protection of all human rights, which are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, and must be treated globally, in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis.
The right to water entitles everyone to have access to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use. The right to sanitation entitles everyone to have physical and affordable access to sanitation, in all spheres of life, that is safe, hygienic, secure, and socially and culturally acceptable and that provides privacy and ensures dignity.
A decade after this important recognition, in 2020, around 1 in 4 people lacked safely managed drinking water in their homes and nearly half the world’s population lacked safely managed sanitation. COVID-19 has highlighted the urgent need to ensure everyone can access good hand hygiene. At the onset of the pandemic, 3 in 10 people worldwide could not wash their hands with soap and water within their homes.
While the world needs to step up its investment in making provisions for universal WASH, the pace has to accelerate in case of Least Developed Countries. To achieve universal access to safely managed drinking water by 2030, the current rate of progress in the Least Developed Countries would need to increase ten-fold. In fragile contexts, where people were twice as likely to lack safe drinking water, it would need to accelerate by a
factor of 23.
For the war zones and conflict stuck areas, special initiatives with the involvement of UN, experts and peace makers should work to engage with governments to ensure that all parties to armed conflict comply fully with their obligations under international law. For detention centres such as the ones from Libya, discussed in this article, the respective donors and others involved should make immediate evaluation of the situation and take measures to ensure right and dignity of the migrants and refugees.
Climate change is another huge threat that needs to be tackled with appropriate global and local actions. Climate change is projected to increase the number of water-stressed regions and exacerbate shortages in already water-stressed regions. In 2050, about 2.7 to 3.2 billion people will be living in severely water stressed areas. It therefore means, even after three decades from now, we will still be struggling to realise the goal of right to water and sanitation for all, unless we put our priorities right.

[The views expressed are the author’s own. They do not purport to reflect the views of Urban Update.]