A/HRC/RES/39/8
Deeply concerned further that the lack of access to adequate water and sanitation
services, including for menstrual hygiene management, especially in schools, workplaces,
health centres, and public facilities and buildings, negatively affects gender equality and
women’s and girls’ enjoyment of human rights, including the rights to education, health,
safe and healthy working conditions and to participate in public affairs,
Deeply concerned that women and girls are particularly at risk of and exposed to
attacks, sexual and gender-based violence, harassment and other threats to their safety
while collecting household water and when accessing sanitation facilities outside their
homes, or practising open defecation,
Deeply alarmed that water, sanitation and hygiene-related diseases have a
disproportionate impact on children and that, in humanitarian crises, including in times of
conflict or natural disasters, children suffer the most from interruptions in water and
sanitation services, and underscoring that progress on reducing child mortality, morbidity
and stunting is linked to children’s and women’s access to safe drinking water and
sanitation services,
Reaffirming the responsibility of States to ensure the respect, promotion and
protection of all human rights, which are universal, indivisible, interdependent and
interrelated and must be treated globally, in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing
and with the same emphasis,
Recalling that the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation are derived
from the right to an adequate standard of living and are inextricably related to the right to
the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health and to the right to life and
human dignity,
Reaffirming the importance of eliminating discrimination and inequalities in the
enjoyment of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation on the grounds of race,
gender, age, disability, ethnicity, culture, religion and national or social origin or on any
other grounds, and with a view to eliminating discrimination and inequalities based on
factors such as rural-urban disparities, substandard housing, income levels or other relevant
considerations,
Affirming the importance of national programmes and policies in ensuring the
progressive realization of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation,
Stressing the importance of monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the
Sustainable Development Goals and targets, including Goal 6 on ensuring the availability
and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all,
Affirming the importance of regional and international technical cooperation, where
appropriate, as a means to promote the progressive realization of the human rights to safe
drinking water and sanitation without any prejudice to questions of international water law,
including international watercourse law,
Recognizing the important role that civil society plays at the local, national, regional
and international levels in facilitating the achievement of the purposes and principles of the
United Nations, fundamental freedoms and human rights, including the human rights to
safe drinking water and sanitation,
1.
Reaffirms that the human right to safe drinking water entitles everyone,
without discrimination, to have access to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible
and affordable water for personal and domestic use, and that the human right to sanitation
entitles everyone, without discrimination, to have physical and affordable access to
sanitation, in all spheres of life, that is safe, hygienic, secure, socially and culturally
acceptable and that provides privacy and ensures dignity, while reaffirming that both rights
are essential and components of the right to an adequate standard of living;
3