A/HRC/RES/16/2
58/217 of 23 December 2003 proclaiming the International Decade for Action, “Water for
Life” (2005-2015),
Noting with interest relevant commitments and initiatives promoting the human right
to safe drinking water and sanitation, including the Abuja Declaration, adopted at the first
Africa-South America Summit, in 2006, the message from Beppu, adopted at the first AsiaPacific Water Summit, in 2007, the Delhi Declaration, adopted at the third South Asian
Conference on Sanitation, in 2008, and the Sharm el-Sheikh Final Document, adopted at
the Fifteenth Summit Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Movement of
Non-Aligned Countries, in 2009,
Bearing in mind the commitments made by the international community to achieve
fully the Millennium Development Goals, and stressing, in that context, the resolve of
Heads of State and Government, as expressed in the United Nations Millennium
Declaration, to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people unable to reach or afford safe
drinking water, and to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation, as
agreed in the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(“Johannesburg Plan of Implementation”) and the outcome document adopted at the Highlevel Plenary Meeting of the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly on the Millennium
Development Goals entitled “Keeping the promise: united to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals”,
Deeply concerned that approximately 884 million people lack access to improved
water sources and that more than 2.6 billion people do not have access to improved
sanitation as defined by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s
Fund in their 2010 Joint Monitoring Programme report, and alarmed that, every year,
approximately 1.5 million children under 5 years of age die and 443 million school days are
lost as a result of water- and sanitation-related diseases,
Affirming the need to focus on local and national perspectives in considering the
issue, leaving aside questions of international watercourse law and all transboundary water
issues,
Recalling Council resolutions 5/1, on institution-building of the United Nations
Human Rights Council, and 5/2, on the code of conduct for special procedures mandate
holders of the Human Rights Council, of 18 June 2007, and stressing that the mandate
holder shall discharge his or her duties in accordance with those resolutions and the
annexes thereto,
1.
Welcomes the recognition of the human right to safe drinking water and
sanitation by the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, and the affirmation by
the latter that the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is derived from the right
to an adequate standard of living and inextricably related to the right to the highest
attainable standard of physical and mental health, as well as the right to life and human
dignity;
2.
Also welcomes the work of the Independent Expert on the issue of human
rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, including the
progress in collecting good practices for her compendium,1 the comprehensive, transparent
and inclusive consultations conducted with relevant and interested actors from all regions
for her thematic reports and compilation of good practices, as well as the undertaking of
country missions;
1
2
A/HRC/15/31/Add.1.