A/HRC/RES/39/8
Recalling also General Assembly resolution 71/222 of 21 December 2016, by which
the Assembly proclaimed the period from 2018 to 2028 the International Decade for
Action, “Water for Sustainable Development”,
Recalling further the relevant commitments and initiatives promoting the human
rights to safe drinking water and sanitation made at the 2014 high-level meeting of the
Sanitation and Water for All partnership and in the Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and
Hygiene, adopted at the fourth African Conference on Sanitation and Hygiene in 2015, the
Dhaka Declaration, adopted at the sixth South Asian Conference on Sanitation in 2016, the
Lima Declaration, adopted at the fourth Latin American and Caribbean Conference on
Sanitation in 2016, and the Dar es Salaam road map for achieving the Ngor commitments
on water security and sanitation in Africa, adopted at the sixth Africa Water Week in 2016,
and noting the Budapest Water Summit 2016 and its recommendations, the call for action
of the high-level symposium on the theme “Sustainable Development Goal 6 and targets:
ensuring that no one is left behind in access to water and sanitation”, held in Dushanbe in
2016, the seventh South Asian Conference on Sanitation, held in Islamabad in 2018, and
the High-level International Conference on the International Decade for Action “Water for
Sustainable Development”, held in Dushanbe in 2018,
Welcoming the work of the World Health Organization and the United Nations
Children’s Fund in the 2017 update published by their Joint Monitoring Programme for
Water Supply and Sanitation,
Welcoming also the fact that, according to a report by the Joint Monitoring
Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation in 2015, an estimated 71 per cent of the global
population uses a safely managed drinking water service system, while being deeply
concerned, however, that 12 per cent of the global population still lacks even a basic
drinking water system,
Deeply concerned that 844 million people lack a basic water service, 2.1 billion
people lack access to safe drinking water that is available when needed and free from
contamination in their homes, 4.5 billion people lack access to safely managed sanitation
and 892 million people still practise open defecation,
Welcoming the fact that the Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and
Sanitation has established an extensive global database and has been instrumental in
developing global norms to benchmark progress, while taking into consideration the fact
that official figures do not always capture all the dimensions of the human rights to water
and sanitation,
Deeply concerned that the lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation and
hygiene underlies severe human costs, such as poor health and high mortality rates, and
major economic losses, and affirming that affordability, accessibility, availability and
quality, as human rights criteria ensuring the rights to safe drinking water and sanitation,
require, inter alia, that water, sanitation and hygiene facilities and services are within the
safe physical reach of all sections of the population without discrimination of any kind and
are accessible at a price that is affordable to all,
Expressing concern that climate change has contributed and continues to contribute
to the increased frequency and intensity of both sudden-onset natural disasters and slowonset events, and that these events have adverse effects on the full enjoyment of all human
rights, including the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation,
Deeply concerned that women and girls often face particular barriers in their
enjoyment of the rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, which are exacerbated in
humanitarian crises, and that they shoulder the main burden of collecting household water
in many parts of the world, which constitutes a major impediment to the achievement of
their economic empowerment, independence and social and economic development,
Deeply concerned also that widespread silence and stigma surrounding menstruation
and menstrual hygiene mean that women and girls often lack basic information thereon, are
excluded and stigmatized and are thus prevented from realizing their full potential,
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