Is water a human right?

Is water a human right? This is a question that many debate on a daily basis. According to The World Health Organization “the content of the right to water may be generally defined as a right to access to water of sufficient cleanliness and in sufficient quantities to meet individual needs.” The right to water must be sufficient enough to meet basic human needs such as drinking, bathing, cleaning, cooking and sanitation. Personal and domestic uses of water account for less than ten percent of the total amount of water used in human activities, although essential uses require a significantly lower percentage.  One aspect of water rights is affordability and accessibility. In many places in the world people do not have immediate accessibility to water, normally the women and sometimes the children walk for hours to fetch water daily. Retrieving water on a daily basis from the nearest water source most of the time is contaminated but it is the only water that they have access to. Water is not equally distributed, leading to insufficient access. Lack of distribution networks, working systems to extract groundwater or harvest rainwater and, in some cases, exclusion from these services or facilities limit the extent of peoples access to water. With affordability, if fees are prohibitive that poor households must sacrifice other essential rights, such as education, health services or food, they will then have to use contaminated water which means individuals within that household are not enjoying their right to adequate water. According to the United Nations General Assembly in 2010 they recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights. Another aspect is the water being safe; meaning the water required for each personal or domestic use must be safe, therefore free from micro-organisms, chemical substances and radiological hazards that constitute a threat to an individual’s personal health. One more aspect is that the water has to be acceptable, water should be of an acceptable color, odor and taste for each personal or domestic use. All water facilities and services must be culturally appropriate and sensitive to gender, lifestyle and privacy requirements.

In my opinion I believe that water should be a basic human right that everyone should have access to. I believe that having access to safe drinking water is central in living a healthy lifestyle. I see water as one of the most important necessities to every human being, not being able to have immediate access causes many obstacles.  People of lower income households or individuals living in developing countries do not have the funds to afford it, so they find alternative water sources that are most likely contaminated. Contaminated water leads to a multitude of diseases that can ultimately end in death. I think that if we recognize the amount of people in the world that does not have access to safe drinking water it should be a wakeup call. Having the accessibility to clean water can reduce a lot of the problems that our world is facing. Therefore that is why I believe that water should now and always be recognized as a basic human right.

 http://www.un.org/waterforlifedecade/human_right_to_water.shtml

 http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/humanrights/en/index2.html

 http://www.righttowater.info/right-to-water/