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Water is essential to realization of human rights, UN officials tell global forum

Water is essential to realization of human rights, UN officials tell global forum

Sergio Vieira de Mello
Just ahead of World Water Day - an event planned to inspire political and local-level action to promote responsible water use and conservation - top United Nations rights officials and experts today drew attention to the crucial link between water and the realization of human rights.

"Water is an essential but limited resource, crucial to the pursuit of a dignified life and to the realization of many human rights," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, said in a statement delivered on his behalf to the Third World Water Forum underway in Japan this week.

"Beyond personal and domestic needs, water is necessary for realizing many other human rights, such as the rights to adequate food, health and housing," Mr. de Mello said, adding that safe water is especially necessary to reduce the risk of water-related disease. "It should be noted that the principle of non-discrimination applies to the right to water, which means that special attention and measures should be ensured to benefit the vulnerable and disadvantaged."

The High Commissioner also stressed that access to water must never be compromised, encouraging delegates to include an explicit reference to water as a human right in the Ministerial Declaration to be adopted during the Conference.

Meanwhile, a group of experts from the UN Commission on Human Rights issued a joint statement to the Forum recommending that plans for the implementation of national and international water strategies should encompass a human rights-based approach.

The Special Rapporteurs on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, the right to food, Jean Ziegler, and the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Paul Hunt, all said that water is inextricably linked to the realization of the rights they are charged with studying.

The Rapporteurs stressed that water, as an essential public good, took priority over water as an economic commodity, and that water should never be used as an instrument of economic or political pressure. Governments at the Forum "must consider meeting the needs of the most vulnerable first, keeping in mind the primacy of human rights obligations," the joint statement said, adding that only then will the goals and targets contained in the 2000 Millennium Declaration and the plan of action adopted last year in Johannesburg and the rights to water, adequate housing, food and health be realized.