3.5.1 Conventions, protocols and resolutions

Over the past few decades, there have been several initiatives emanating from the United Nations (Figure 3.3), which have been enacted in terms of conventions, protocols and resolutions. These have mainly focused on ensuring people’s rights to water and sanitation and addressing the WASH needs of disadvantaged and marginalised groups of people.

Figure 3.3  United Nations headquarters, New York.

Just some of these initiatives are briefly described below:

• In 1999, a United Nations Protocol on Water and Health stated in Article 5: ‘Equitable access to water, adequate in terms both of quantity and of quality, should be provided for all members of the population, especially those who suffer a disadvantage or social exclusion’ (UN, 1999).
• In December 2003, the United Nations General Assembly, proclaimed the period 2005–2015 to be the International Decade for Action ‘Water for Life’ (Figure 3.4). It focused on co-operation at all levels and on ‘action-oriented activities and policies that ensure the long-term sustainable management of water resources, in terms of both quantity and quality, and include measures to improve sanitation’ (UNDESA, n.d.).
• In 2010, according to the Statement on the Right to Sanitation of the UN Economic and Social Council: ‘States must ensure that everyone, without discrimination, has physical and affordable access to sanitation, in all spheres of life, which is safe, hygienic, secure, socially and culturally acceptable, provides privacy and ensures dignity’ (UN, 2010).
• In 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted the resolution, The human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. This followed the UN’s 2010 recognition of the human right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, affirming that this is ‘derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human dignity’ (UN, 2011).

Figure 3.4  International Decade for Action, Water for Life, 2005–2015.