Nearly 300 organizations sent a letter today demanding that the human right to water and sanitation be included in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The right was excluded from the most recent version of the SDG text that is to frame the official UN development agenda for the next 15 years.
The letter states, ” our organizations fear that the human right to water and sanitation continues to be contested within the context of a global competition for scarce water resources. We are concerned that a development agenda that is not explicitly committed to upholding this vital human right may end up undermining it.”
Next week, the Open Working Group on SDGs is holding the penultimate session in a series that began in March 2013. Water justice organizations are hoping the text will include a human-rights-based approach before it is presented to governments at the UN General Assembly in September.
The Blue Planet Project and Mining Working Group at the UN are calling on water justice activists to tweet messages calling for the human right to water and sanitation to be included in the SDGs using the hashtags #OWG12, #SDGs and #right2water.
Read the letter in English | French | Spanish | Portuguese
