Exploring the Right to Water and Sanitation from a Feminist Perspective
There has been a great deal of interest in issues surrounding water and sanitation since the United Nations affirmed water and sanitation as a human right on the 30th of September 2010. Barriers to access of water and sanitation are not simply the result of a physical shortage of water and climate change but is equally an effect of inequitable access especially in ‘developing’ nations and specific sections and communities within those nations – rural, urban poor, indigenous, disabled, and other marginalised sections.
With the recent announcement of the Right, APWLD wants to explore the current recognition of the Right to Water and Sanitation and the impact it has on women’s rights. To achieve this, APWLD will map work undertaken by women’s human rights groups, networks and organisations who are facilitating the recognition of this Right. The primary objective of the research would be to analyse the Right from a feminist perspective to explore possibilities of a regional, sub-regional and/or national campaign.
Significance for APWLD
The Feminist Law and Practice (FLP) programme of APWLD focuses on building the capacity of activists and lawyers to analyse and critique laws from a feminist, rights based perspective and build campaigns to advance women’s rights in the region. This tool of analysis enables one to look at what is behind the law, what social, political and economic systems prop up discriminatory laws and practices that marginalise women. The feminist framework also imbeds a commitment to solidarity and movement building within the programme. While a good legal outcome using international law is a positive outcome in an individual case, APWLD looks at what broader impact it has and how it can be used to raise awareness and to build a movement of people demanding rights.
With the recent announcement of the Right, APWLD wants to explore the current recognition of the Right to Water and Sanitation and the impact it has on women’s rights. To achieve this, APWLD will map work undertaken by women’s human rights groups, networks and organisations who are facilitating the recognition of this Right. The primary objective of the research would be to analyse the Right from a feminist perspective to explore possibilities of a regional, sub-regional and/or national campaign.
Research Concept Note
Clean water and safe sanitation are essential resources and basic entitlements yet they are inaccessible, inequitably distributed and appropriated as ‘commodities’. While each country’s constitution guarantees economic development and social justice, basic rights and entitlements do not simply remain unfulfilled but are also exploited.
Barriers to access of water and sanitation is not simply the result of a physical shortage of water and climate change but is equally an effect of inequitable access especially in ‘developing’ nations and specific sections and communities within those nations – rural, urban poor, indigenous, disabled, and other marginalised sections.
The impact of lack of access to clean water and safe sanitation is not gender neutral. Women and men experience vulnerability differently and adapt to impact differently owing to their socially defined roles and opportunities, access to resources and decision making. Customary laws and traditions reinforce women’s secondary role within the private and public domains, thus compounding the impact of lack of access on women and especially women belonging to rural, indigenous, migrant and other marginalised sections of the population. Women, across the region of Asia Pacific, are primarily responsible for getting, storing and making available water to their families and communities, not just for drinking but for food preparation, cleaning, washing, health, hygiene and waste disposal. Women, have therefore, accumulated considerable knowledge about water sources, storage and management. However, efforts geared towards improving management of water and sanitation have excluded women from decision making vis-à-vis location of water and sanitation sources, priority concerns of water and sanitation projects; excluded from water management, from ownership of assets and so on. Furthermore women’s particular concerns regarding water and sanitation are often not fully considered, this does not relate purely to hygiene concerns but also the lack of security experienced by women as long searches for water and lack of access to sanitation can expose them to sexual violence.
The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution in July 2010 to recognise and realise the Right to Water and Sanitation as a Human Right. The Human Rights Council Resolution took a step further, in September 2010, by specifying that this right is legally binding by recognising that it is derived from a right recognised in a number of international treaties.
While the Right to Water has existed as a right in several international treaties and conventions; within the Human Rights Council (Independent Expert on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations related to Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation); and as an MDG, this particular resolution enables a shift in focus from ‘declare’ to ‘realise’, therefore enforcing it as a basic human right to human dignity. While the right has not been separately realised under international conventions, it finds it basis in declarations and treaties such as the UDHR, ICESCR, ICCPR, CRC, CRPD, CEDAW, BPfA, CERD and so on. The specificity of this right highlights that safe drinking water and sanitation are integral to the realisation of all human rights.
Right to Water and Sanitation reinforces women’s economic, social and cultural rights. With the declaration of this right, there has been a shift from perceiving it as a civil right, and therefore service oriented, to perceiving it as a human right, therefore linked to human dignity and equality. The realisation of it as an economic, social and cultural right allows for it to be analysed from the perspective of inclusion, accessibility, participation.
Some may argue that the Right to Water and Sanitation concerns hygiene and prevention of disease but the realisation of this right leads one to understand that this is not charity based and service oriented but about entitlements and human dignity. It, therefore, becomes important to view this right from the perspective of the most marginalised, their access to water and sanitation and their access to redress in the lack of access to water and sanitation.
Latest act of harassment of human rights workers- Kavita Srivastava, Convenor of Right to Food Campaign’s Steering Group
RIGHT TO FOOD CAMPAIGN- 3 October, 2011
We condemn in the strongest possible terms the arbitrary raid this morning (3 October), in Jaipur, on the house of Kavita Srivastava, General Secretary of PUCL and convenor of the Right to Food Campaign’s steering group. This is yet another instance of harassment of human rights workers under the cover of fighting Naxalism. Kavita Srivastava is the convenor of the Steering Committee of the Right to Food Campaign and PUCL is the petitioner in the Supreme Court case on the Right to Food which has recently challenged the Government on the issue of the poverty line.
Kavita Srivastava has been a tireless defender of human rights for many years and has already been harassed earlier for her fearless opposition to the criminal activities of the Chhattisgarh government (arbitrary detentions, encounter killings, false cases, and such) under the garb of fighting Naxalism.
This is a wholly reprehensible act of targeting of human rights activists as well as a totally unacceptable attack on civil liberties in general. We condemn it and demand an unconditional apology from the Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh police on this reprehensible action. We would like to remind the Government that such undemocratic and arbitrary actions will not silence human rights defenders and instead amplify their voices against injustice and state repression.
Members of the Steering Group, Right to Food Campaign
For more information
APWLD Questionnaire- Facilitating Access to Clean Water and Safe Sanitation
APWLD would appreciate if you could fill out the questionnaire to enable us to understand and collate your initiatives on facilitating access to clean water and safe sanitation, to lend further support to your advocacy in the realisation of the Right to Water and Sanitation.
