Right to Water

The film produced by Brian Woods of True Vision TV explores the future of the world’s water supply indicating how the world is running out of its most precious resource. Woods builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on the disturbing picture of the battle for its ownership and the commoditization of the resource. The film raises the question of whether water should be a human right or a tradable commodity.Read More

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has come up with the fourth edition of “Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality”, which integrates the third edition, which was published in 2004, with both the first addendum to the third edition, published in 2006, and the second addendum to the third edition, published in 2008. It supersedes previous editions of the Guidelines and previous International Standards. 

This edition of the Guidelines further develops concepts, approaches and information introduced in previous editions, including the comprehensive preventive risk management approach for ensuring drinking-water quality.

Read More

This report by Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy identifies three principles and two sets of policy-level interventions necessary to enhance water and food security for marginalised communities by drawing on the experiences of the Tamilnadu Women’s Collective (WC), a state-level federation of women’s groups from 1,500 villages, in the context where communities all around the world are struggling to find ways to cope with changes affecting food and water security because of the phenomenon of climate change.

The report argues that many a times, new food and water security policies at the national and international level tend to be narrow, look at each of these issues in isolation and  undermine food and water security strategies adopted by individuals and households from marginal groups. Adaptation strategies to address food security focus almost exclusively on increasing agricultural production, while ignoring health and cultural aspects of the food being produced, and the role of agriculture as a means for rural viability. Read More

The purpose of this handbook “Right to Water and Sanitation” by Freshwater Action Network (FAN) Global is to help civil society and those working on water and sanitation issues to adopt a human rights-based approach to advocacy, so that they can improve water and sanitation service regulation and provision at international, national and local levels. Directed primarily at community groups, human rights NGOs, rights-based development practitioners and aid workers, this handbook aims to strengthen human rights-based advocacy by providing innovative and practical suggestions that activists and organisations can use in their work. It also acts as a resource guide for finding further information.

Water and sanitation are essential for living a healthy life with dignity. However, around a billion people across the world lack access to a safe and sufficient water supply to cover their basic needs. Over 2.5 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation and nearly 1.2 billion face the indignity of open defecation every day.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 is seriously off track, with sanitation severely lagging behind. For example, estimates suggest that at current rates of progress, sub-Saharan Africa will miss the MDG water target by about 25 years, while the sanitation target may not be reached until well into the 22nd century.

Read More