30.07.2010 - Artículo
Access to water is a human right (UN)

On 28 July 2010, the UN General Assembly formally recognized that access to water of drinking quality and to sanitation facilities is a human right. Following a more than 15-year-long debate on the issue, 122 countries, including Switzerland, voted in favour of a compromise resolution enshrining this right. Forty-one other countries abstained from voting.

The resolution highlights the fact that some 884 million people across the globe are deprived of access to clean drinking water, and that more than 2.6 million human beings lack basic sanitation facilities. It underlines that approximately 2 million persons, the majority of them young children, die each year as a result of illnesses caused by water that is not fit to drink and by the absence of sanitation. The resolution also recalls the promise that was made by global leaders back in the year 2000 within the scope of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

The text urges States and international organizations to provide financial and technological assistance to developing countries in order to “scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all”.