First Congregational United Church of Christ of Salem Oregon has been a participant in the Ecumenical Water Network of the World Council of Churches since 2008. The Executive Director of JUST Water now represents the national United Church of Christ on the International Reference Group of the Ecumenical Water Network.

See WCC account of the consultation in the news of the WCC press centre at headline ewn-consultation-calls-for-universal-access-to-water-and-sanitation.

God, Lead Us to Abundant Life and Peace through Water Justice:

Statement of the Ecumenical Water Network, World Council of Churches (5th July 2013)

This statement reflects the fruits sense of the discussions among participants at the Strategic Consultation of the Ecumenical Water Network held in Berlin, Germany on 10-12 June 2013. These discussions took place as[u1] Central Europe experienced floods of unprecedented magnitude, killing many, disrupting the lives of millions, destroying homes and businesses, with damages estimated to be in excess of 15 billion Euros.[1].

I. Water from the Perspective of Faith

Water has been present on Earth since the beginning of Creation. The first page of the Hebrew Scriptures avows that at the beginning, the Spirit hovered over the waters (Genesis 1, 1), while on the last page of the Christian Scriptures, the river of the water of life flows from the throne of God (Revelation 22, 1).

God has provided us with beautiful pristine fresh waters that fall as rain, spring forth from the earth, lay low in the earth as groundwater, and gather together in streams and rivers.

Water is essential for the every life of every creature. Human beings and other creatures mostly consist of water. And so, as Exodus recounts, the very life of the people wandering in the desert, from Egypt to the Promised Land, depended upon the ability of Moses to find water. (Exodus 17, 1)..7-17).

Water is central to our spiritual life. Our Christian faith tradition proclaims the saving power of water, recognizing sacred power in the cleansing water of baptism. Baptism is also the visible sign of our belonging to the church, following the example of the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. (Matthew 3, 13). Again and again our Scriptures describe the precious genuine life found in following Jesus as living waters. People of many other faith traditions also celebrate the life-giving power of water.

Because water is truly the source of life, it requires responsible action from us as human beings:, action to preserveto preserve and share water for the benefit of all creatures, as the Statement on Water for Life of the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches proclaims.[2]

I.  The Realities of Our World Reflect Injustice and Violent Conflicts Around Water

A.  Confessing Our Irresponsible Behavior Towards God’s Gift of Water

We are all people of the water, utterly dependent upon this gift of creation to drink, grow our crops, water our livestock, power our mills and homes, enable our enterprises, and provide habitat for fish and other aquatic creatures. But we humans have treated God’s gift of water irresponsibly.

We have altered the climate of the earth and transformed the nature of the rains: areas with two rainy seasons now experience just one, rainy seasons shrink from months to days, or turn from times of blessed rains to times of unrelenting and increasingly ferocious typhoons and hurricanes, drought conditions often persist decade after decade, and hundred year floods appear several times in a single decade. As a result, we suffer: we die, our crops wither, and our homes and fields are swept away by floods, landslides, or fierce winds and we die.

We have consumed water too greedily and wasted water. We waste water in cities using clean water to grow thirsty exotic plants, wash sidewalks and cars, and flush toilets. In the midst of water scarcity in rurWe waste water in rural areas, we waste water by drilling wells for tourist attractions and resort homes that steal water from our rivers, and irrigating crops better grown in areas with plentiful water. We waste water to make products at great cost and with minimal benefit for local communities. For example, in many places, drinking water wells have ceased to function due to declines in the water table. Often, these declines are caused by enormous, unsustainable withdrawals of water made by factories or farms owned by transnational corporations to producefor products like biofuel or bottled water.

We have failed to share water equitably and wisely. Often oOnly those who live in the most prosperous countries and the richest of those in other countries have clean water to drink. Often only the wealthy and transnational corporations have access to water necessary to irrigate crops and water livestock, while small and subsistence farmers have none.

We have failed to allocate water wisely. Often wWe do not leave enough water in streams and rivers to support fish, wildlife, and the ecosystems upon which all God’s creatures rely. We allow large commercial agricultural operations to take water when small and subsistence farmers have none.

We have contaminated water, transforming it from a life-giving substance to a death-dealing hazard, for both humanity and the rest of God’s creatures. Fertilizers and pesticides employed by commercial agriculture, heavy metals from mining, and extremely toxic, persistent chemicals from industries pollute lakes, rivers, basins and aquifersrivers. This pollution of our precious waters destroys aquatic ecosystems, kills fish and other aquatic creatures, renders fish too dangerous to eat, and leaves water too toxic for drinking, bathing, or other purposes.

We have made opportunistic attempts to capitalize on water scarcity. When private profit drives decision-making, trans-national corporations and other private actors seek to benefit from water scarcity, whether by privatizing municipal water service provision, by obtainingsecuring vast tracks of land simply to secure exclusive rights to water, or by selling bottled water at hundreds of times the real cost. By these practices, we turn water from being a gift of God into a mere commodity sold to the highest bidder. This violates the fundamental nature of water as a commonpublic good that ought to remain in public ownership and be controlled by our communities, for the benefit of all within the community, particularly the most vulnerable. Private ownership or management of water is inappropriate where our governments lack the capacity or the will fail to regulate private actors effectively or to assure that the human right to water and sanitation is realized. When we Wwasteing water just to make a profit, exploit water by selling it at excessive prices, or grab land just to acquire simply because governments have given away the right to use it, or exploiting water by selling water or water rights, we abuse at excessive prices, are illegitimate abuses of God’s gift of water.

We in the Church have failed to fulfill fully our responsibility to care for this critical element of God’s creation. We do not consistently treat water respectfully and educate our congregations about proper use of water. We seldom place saving millions of lives through the provision of clean water, sanitation and health education at the center of our mission responses. We fail too often to raise our prophetic voice on behalf of water justice.

A.  All Creation Groans from Human Irresponsibility and IgnoranceErrors

When we act irresponsibly towards water, all creation groans, for human beings and the rest of God’s creatures endure needless suffering, and many die.

When drinking water becomes scarce, our women, children and elders spend hours, even days, walking and waiting to secure the precious water necessary to sustain life. They sacrifice precious time and energy that might otherwise be spent on school, farming, and other enterprises to lift their families out of extreme, soul-deadening poverty.

When drinking water becomes contaminated, we suffer from preventable diseases as common and easily treatedcured as diarrhea and as swiftly and frequently deadly as cholera. It is a sad reality of our world that several billion people, mostly poor or people marginalized within their societies, lack access to clean water, adequate sanitation, or the knowledge necessary to protect their health from the ravages of water-borne diseases.

When sanitation is not available, there is nowhere for us to defecate but on the street or in the field. We are stripped of our privacy and dignity. Young women are discouraged from attending school. We are exposed to disease-causing viruses, and bacteria, and intestinal parasites that sap our energy, deprive us of nutrition by stealing the benefit of our food, sicken us, and all too often kill us. And inadequate sanitation pollutes the very water we depend upon for life.

Together, dirty water, inadequate sanitation, and ignorance of basic hygiene combine to cause almost 10% of all the illnesses experienced by human beings and to kill up toas many as 3 million people each year,[3] most of them children under the age of 5.[4]

Our irresponsibility towards water has other catastrophic consequences. Failure to share water equitably and wisely creates extreme hardships for the most vulnerable of God’s children and destroys the integrity of God’s creation. When water is scarce and not equitably allocated, conflict then tears our communities apart and creates animosity, even war, between scarcity gives rise to conflict within and between communities, disturbing God’s shalom.. {{ insert the groaning of creation from other irresponsible actions}}

I.  A Critical Aspect of Water Justice: Using Development Efforts to Realize the Human Right to Water and Sanitation

Realizing the human right of universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation involves construction, operation, and maintenance of expensive infrastructure. We cannot achieve this aspect of water justice without national governments and the international community , the World Bank, and regional development banks directing a much greater percentage of development funding toward water and sanitation. Ironically, although the ongoing costs of dirty water and inadequate sanitation are almost ten times as much as the cost of this infrastructure,[5] progress on this front has been halting.

Fortunately, clean water and sanitation are such critical components of human development that the United Nations focused on them in the Millennium Development Goals, the goals that the UN, other international organization, and its member nations sought to achieve by 2015. Throughout the world, national governments committed at the turn of the 21st century to build the infrastructure necessary to provide safe drinking water and basic sanitation, adopting that as MDGMDG Goal 7. Goal 7 seeks to cut the percentage of people without safe drinking water from 242% in 1990 to 11% by 2015 and the percentage of people without basicadequate sanitation from 5151% in 1990 to 25.5% by 2015.[6] The UN has recently proclaimed that we have met the MDG goal for water,[7] though it concedes that progress on the sanitation goalMDG is further behind than any other development goal.[8]

Unfortunately, less progress has been made on meeting MDG Goal 7 or towards eventually achieving universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation than the UN’s statements might suggest. As the UN’s Joint Monitoring Programme recognizes, the existing Goal 7MDG water and sanitation goal provides an inadequate measure of progress because the essentialthe critical characteristics of “safe” drinking water and “basic” sanitation are neither defined, nor considered in monitored, in measuring progress toward Goal 7.[9] Overall, Further, the goal and the monitoring of progressthe way progress is monitored failed to does not address several assurecritically important elements to realizing the benefits of increased access, because:

• Poor people living in informal settlements and remote rural areas are not necessarily counted in national statistics
• the sufficiency of Waterthe quality and quantity are not always sufficient for of water for drinking and other personal uses
• Infrastructure and service provision have not been delivered in a sustainable manner; the sustainability of infrastructure and service provision
• ; the effect when governments fail to concurrently provide Wwater, sanitation, and hygiene have not been provided concurrently
• Poor and marginalized people have been ignored in the provision of services education; the asymmetries and inequalities as to who receives services
• National, regional and global averages have obscured the lack of progress, and the continued desperate situation, of rural, poor, and marginalized people in many nations, especially lesser developed countries.; and the geographic variation among and within regions in terms of meeting the MDGs.

The human right to water and sanitation is now recognized and embedded in international law through treaties and through the 2010 actions of the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council.[10] The internationally recognized human right to water and sanitation “entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses.”[11][12] And virtually every nation in the world is legally required to respect, protect, and take concrete actions to progressively realize that right.

As the deadline to meet Goalthe MDG 7 approachesexpires in 2015 and we are collectively setting a new internationaldevelopment goal for water and sanitation, we must seek to achieve universal access to clean water and adequate sanitation as rapidly as possible, defining the new goal in a way that better captures our intent and is more consistent with the human right to water and sanitation, and the obligations of governments to fulfill that right.

The post-2015 development goals must place an extremely high priority on providing water, sanitation and hygiene to the poor and other marginalized groups. Ironically, the poor have not benefitted much from the progress on the MDGs, even though development efforts are supposed to be aimed at alleviating poverty. The report of the Special Rapporteur provides strong evidence that the poor and other marginalized groups have been discriminated against with respect to water and sanitation. Reports of the Joint Monitoring Programme, summarized in the 2012 update, underscore that rural communities, those in the lower quintiles of wealth, and those in the least developed countries continue to have substantially less access to water and sanitation.

The Church calls upon the international community and national governments to commit to half the percentage of rural residents, the poor and other marginalized groups without access to adequate drinking water supply, hand-washing and sanitation facilities at home by 2025. Further, the Church calls for universal access to adequate drinking water supply, hand-washing and sanitation facilities by rural residents, the poor and other marginalized groups by 2030. These goals articulate a necessary preference for poor and other marginalized peoples. The goals for rural residents, the poor and other marginalized people must reflect affordability, sustainability, and supply drinking water of sufficient quantity and adequate quality, as measured by specific indicators, to meet the human right to water and sanitation of these systematically disadvantaged groups. Specific recommendations on the post-2015 development agenda by the Church are included below.

I.

II.  The Role of the Church in Creating a New Reality of Water Justice

A.   The work of the Ecumenical Water Network Recount the past role of the Church (WCC, EWN, and national churches) in creating water justice

Both historically and today, the Church has built or funded a great number of community based water and sanitation projects in developing countries. But advocacy efforts on water justice have lagged behind. This situation changed with the founding of the Ecumenical Water Network (EWN).

Based on theological reflection on how we should in faith respond to convictions and responding to the water crises caused by water injustice, is, churches and other faith based organizations church related organizations have come together to effectively respond to water issues the latter tthrough the Ecumenical Water Network (EWN). Since the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches last WCC in Porto Alegre, when churches were called to join the network, a significant number of churches, regional ecumenical organizations and other ecumenical partners have joined efforts to protect water and advocate for the human right to water and sanitation. Inspired by the struggle of communities all over the world, by reflecting and strategizing together in consultations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the EWN has become a concrete instrument of water justice.to respond to the water crisis. Hosted by the World Council of Churches, EWN has provided WCC, it has been a space to share stories on thechurches involvement of churches in on water issues, to develop educational and worship resources on water and sanitation, and to catalyize the advocacy work of the churches on this issue.

The EWN, its participants, and its partners and allies in civil society played a significant role in securing the appointment of the Independent Expert (now Special Rapporteur) on the human right to water and sanitation. Her work, together with the advocacy efforts of the EWN, participants, partners, and allies, was crucial in securing the recognition of the human right to water and sanitation by the United Nations General Assembly and UN for a Special procedure on water and sanitation which was adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2010. MuchA lot has been accomplished, but much remains to be done. done but efforts are still necessary to achieve water for all. Our efforts to seek recognition of the human right to water and sanitation must now be followed by efforts to assure that “right” is fully implemented and appropriately monitored by national governments, and progress to realize that right for the poor and other marginalized groups is made swiftly, so our vision of clean water and adequate sanitation for all becomes a new reality.

A.  God Calls the Church to Intensify its Efforts to Realize Water Justice

Water is so critical to life that we can hardly call ourselves followers of Christ without focusing our most strenuous mission and witness efforts towards achieving water justice. After alIndeedl, Jesus taught that only those who gave food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty could be considered his followers. (Matthew 25, 34). So we must undertake our role as the body of Christ, as God’s hands and feet in the world, with unprecedented zeal. Achieving water justice must be among the highest priorities on the agenda of every national church, congregation, and Christian organization. We in the Church are called by God to use our unique voice to help create the kingdom of God here on earth and, without water justice, the kingdom remains incredibly distant in the face of needless suffering and death for so many of God’s children and the destruction of the integrity of God’s creation.

A.  Critical Roles of the Church in Achieving Water Justice

The Church has certain critical roles and responsibilities in achieving water justice:

1.  The Church engagesWe engage and educates our congregations and communities on the spiritual and ethical values of water as well as ourand on Christian responsibilities to treat wards water respectfully and toin seeking water justice.

2.  The Church We seeks to be responsible in our use of water in our places of worship and in our daily lives, and by setting such an example, we place a light on the lampstand for all to see. (Mark 4, 21).

3.  The Churchplace a light on the lampstand by being responsible in our use of water.

4.   We funds and carries out projectsundertake direct action to provide clean water and, sanitation, and hygiene education, including actions to prevent water pollution. Although national governments bear the responsibility for fulfilling the human right to water and sanitation, we know that government actions take time and fall short. So, as an expression of Christian love, we take direct action to improve access to clean water and adequate sanitation.

5.  The Church raises a .

6.  Although national governments bear the responsibility for fulfilling the human right to water and sanitation, we know that government actions take time and fall short. So, as an expression of Christian love, we take direct action to improve access to clean water and adequate sanitation. We build or help fund spring caps and cisterns, water treatment systems, sand dams and wells, and composting latrines to provide water and sanitation. We build or help fund soil erosion barriers, protection of riparian areas, and replanting of forests to prevent water pollution.

7.  We raise prophetic voices of faith in support of water justice.

We seek to assure that our resources and those of governments are directed are devoted first towards providing water and sanitation to the most vulnerable populations, the poor and others stigmatized and marginalized by our societies, from the Romas and Dalits to the physically challenged. (Isaiah 1, 17; Amos 5, 24)[13]

We seek to assure decisions made on water and sanitation protect all of God’s creation.

As we pursue water justice, we seek to encourage engagement by, and highlight the powerful witness of, those especially affected by unjust and irresponsible behavior towards water, including women and young people.

1.  As we work, the Churchwe remembers that water justice is a concern not only for Christians. but of all humanity, including those of other faith traditions and those who profess no fait

Knowing that many hands make light work, we participate in and treasure truly collaborative partnerships with our allies in civil society and other faith traditions, with a firm and enduring hope that, together, we can change the world and achieve water justice through our collective efforts.

A.  A Call to Public and Private Actors to Recognize the Church’s Vital Interest in Water and Sanitation

• Because of the historical role of the Church in water and sanitation, issues and because of the critical roles that the Church plays in achieving water justice, all who deal with water issues should recognize that the Church is a significant stakeholder in these matters. We hope that all actors in the water arena will recognize that it is crucial to include the Church in stakeholder discussions at every level.

I.   Specific Recommendations

• The Church at all levels (international, national, and local) must immediately seek to reorient the post-2015 development agenda:

1. The international community and national governments must make firm commitments to provide universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities as part of the post-2015 development agenda.

2.  Those commitments should include early goals for access by rural residents, the poor and other marginalized groups to address their unacceptably low level of access to water and sanitation.

The international community and national governments should commit to cut the percentage of rural residents, the poor and other marginalized groups without access to adequate drinking water supply, hand-washing and sanitation facilities at home by 50% by 2025. Further, the international community and national governments should commit to provide universal access by the poor and other marginalized groups to adequate safe, drinking water supply, hand-washing and sanitation facilities at home by 2030. These goals are necessary to address the asymmetries and inequalities that plague provision of water and sanitation, with some groups being inadvertently or deliberately excluded from access to water and sanitation. The goals for rural residents, the poor and other marginalized groups must reflect affordability, sustainability, and supply drinking water of sufficient quantity and adequate quality, as measured by specific indicators, to meet the human right to water and sanitation of these systematically advantaged groups.

1.  Those commitments should include the features necessary to secure the benefits of water, sanitation, and hygiene facilities. These features include:

        a. Access for all residents, including refugees and other excluded communities.

        b. Access to affordable, relatively continuous, and sustainable services, as measured by specific indicators.

        c. Access to safe drinking water in sufficient quantity and quality to meet drinking and other personal needs to be safe (initially as measured by the JMP proposed                      definitions for “intermediate” access).

        d. Access to drinking water at home with a collection time of 30 minutes or less per person.

        e. Access to hand-washing and menstrual hygiene facilities as well as hygiene education.

        f. Access to water, sanitation, and hygiene services concurrently to the greatest extent feasible to realize the maximum benefits of those services.

2.  The commitments of national governments and the international community with respect to water should include strong goals regarding eliminating groundwater mining, improving water efficiency by all sectors, recycling water, balancing water supply and demand, safe management and disposal of excreta, treating wastewater so that surface waters are safe for humans, fish, and other aquatic creatures and can be rendered drinkable with minimal treatment.

•    The Church at all levels must continue to develop its understanding of water justice. One critical aspect of developing our understanding is sharing stories – as EWN has and will continue to do through consultations and workshops, including those at the 10th Assembly of the World Council of Churches. Another aspect is developing a deeper understanding of the spiritual and ethical values underlying and defining water justice.
•    The Church at all levels must discern and express its own voice to serve as a catalyst for creating an inspiring and shared vision of water justice in the social domain. We should seek to raise awareness of water justice issues throughout society.
•    The Church at all levels must raise our prophetic voice to encourage actions consistent with water justice, including strong and persistent advocacy for full realization of the human right to water and other aspects of water justice. We should lift up the voices of those especially affected by water injustice, including women, youth, the poor, and other marginalized groups. We should also seek to assure that all Creation is cared for in actions related to water.
•    The Church at all levels must increase its support for and funding of community based water and sanitation projects, to ensure that communities secure clean water and adequate sanitation as rapidly and reliably as possible.
•     As  the Church seeks water justice, we should create collaborative partnerships with our allies in civil society and other faith traditions. We do so in the confident hope that, together, with God’s help, we can indeed change the reality of our world from injustice to justice, and bring the Kingdom of God closer to earth.
•    (add recommendations generated from Wednesday afternoon)
•    Sharing stories as continuity of the work of EWN, e.g. at the workshops during the WCC Assembly in Busan
•    Discern the own voice of the church and express religious imagination as a catalyser of an inspiring and shared vision in the public domain
•    Explore joint inter-faith activities as integral component of EWN, e.g. the Global Interfaith WASH Alliance, at WCC Assembly in Busan,

Notes:

[1] Financial Times, Central Europeans prepare for the next flood of the century (14 June 2013). http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/6b190cc4-d4d3-11e2-b4d7-00144feab7de.html#axzz2WFsnf8PZ

[2] World Council of Churches, 9th Assembly, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 14-23 February, 2006, Statement on Water for Life (23 February 2006). http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/documents/wcc-commissions/international-affairs/human-rights-and-impunity/statement-on-water-for-life

[3] The World Health Organization estimated that safe drinking water and adequate sanitation could save 1.8 million deaths from diarrhea and almost 900,000 deaths from malnutrition each year. They would also prevent other seriously damaging illnesses, such as intestinal parasites, lymphatic filariasis, trachoma, and schistosomiasis, which affect 2.3 billion people each year. World Health Organization, How Does Safe Water Affect Global Health? (25 June 2008). http://www.who.int/features/qa/70/en/index.html. (15 June 2013); World Health Organization, Safer water, better health: costs, benefits and sustainability of interventions to protect and promote health (2008). http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2008/9789241596435_eng.pdf. (15 June 2013). (2008).

[4]90% of deaths caused by diarrheal diseases are children under 5 years old, mostly in developing countries. UN Water, Tackling a global crisis: International Year of Sanitation (2008)..

[5] World Health Organization, Safer water, better health: costs, benefits and sustainability of interventions to protect and promote health (2008). http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2008/9789241596435_eng.pdf. (15 June 2013). (2008). Another estimate is that lack of clean water and adequate sanitation cost US $ 260 billion each year, while the total cost of meeting Goal 7 will require a total of US$145 billion and achieving universal access will require an additional US$565 billion, for a total of just over US$700 billion. Comparing the benefit of providing clean water and adequate sanitation of more than US $7 trillion (assuming a facility life of 30 years) to the total cost of roughly US $700 billion, the benefit cost ratio approaches 10. The exact benefit-cost ratio depends upon a series of assumptions about the time value of money, the value of life, facility life, and other factors. The benefit-cost ratios of various aspect of water and sanitation provision calculated by WHO range from 50:1 to less than 1. World Health Organization, Global costs and benefits of drinking-water supply and sanitation interventions to reach the MDG target and universal coverage (2012). http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/75140/1/WHO_HSE_WSH_12.01_eng.pdf, (15 June 2013).

[6] United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 (2012). http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf#page=53 (15 June 2013).

[7] “The MDG drinking water target, which calls for halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2015, was met in 2010, five years ahead of schedule.“ World Health Organization and UNICEF, Joint Monitoring Programme, Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation: 2012 Update (2012). http://www.wssinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/resources/JMP-report-2012-en.pdf (15 June 2013).

[8] United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 (2012). http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf#page=53 (15 June 2013).

[9] World Health Organization and UNICEF, Joint Monitoring Programme, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking-Water: 2013 Update (2013). http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/81245/1/9789241505390_eng.pdf. 768 million people lack access to an improved source of water and 2.5 million people lack access to an improved sanitation. World Health Organization, Data on MGD 7: Water and Sanitation. http://www.who.int/gho/mdg/environmental_sustainability/en/index.html. (15 June 2013). Far more people lack access to clean water and sanitation because “improved” does not necessarily imply access to clean water or adequate sanitation. For example, residential and community taps that deliver non-potable and potentially deadly water nonetheless qualify as “improved.” The Special Rapporteur on the right to water and sanitation stated in her 2011 annual report that a recent study found that 57% of protected wells and 11% of utility water taps have bacteria contamination. UN General Assembly, Statement by the Special Rapporteur on the right to access to safe drinking water and sanitation at the 66th Session of the General Assembly (24 October 2011). (http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=11542&LangID=E. (15 June 2013). As the World Health Organization and UNICEF recognize “For monitoring purposes, the use of improved drinking water sources has been equated to access to safe drinking water, but not all improved sources in actual fact provide drinking water that is safe.” World Health Organization and UNICEF, Joint Monitoring Programme, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking- Water: 2010 Update (2010). http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241563956_eng_full_text.pdf. (15 June 2013). WHO recently expended upon the limitations of its figures, noting: “Since it is not yet possible to measure water quality globally, dimensions of safety, reliability and sustainability are not reflected in the proxy indicator used to track progress towards the MDG target. As a result, it is likely that the number of people using improved water sources is an overestimate of the actual number of people using safe water supplies. Continued efforts are required to promote global monitoring of drinking water safety, reliability and sustainability and to move beyond the MDG water target to universal coverage.” United Nations, Millennium Development Goals Report 2012 (2012). http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/MDG%20Report%202012.pdf#page=53 (15 June 2013). The Report of the High Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda noted that 2 billion people do not have continuous access to safe drinking water: “Around two billion people lack access to continuous, safe water. Improving access – as well as quality – is becoming more urgent as the world faces increasing water scarcity.” United Nations High Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda Report, A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies Through Sustainable Development (2013). http://www.post2015hlp.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/UN-Report.pdf. (15 June 2013).

[10] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 64/292. The human right to water and sanitation (28 July 2010) http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/RES/64/292; United Nations Human Rights Council, Human rights and access to safe drinking water and sanitation (24 September 2010).

[11] United Nations Economic and Social Council , SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES ARISING IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, The right to water (arts. 11 and 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)General Comment No. 15 (20 January 2003).

[12]

[13] Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, Stigma and the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation (2 July 2012) http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/148/98/PDF/G1214898.pdf?OpenElement.

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