A/HRC/RES/18/1
Nations Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992, and the Habitat
Agenda, adopted at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in June
1996, Assembly resolutions 54/175 of 17 December 1999 on the right to development, and
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, the Sharm el-Sheikh Final Document, adopted at the
Fifteenth Summit Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Movement of NonAligned Countries, in 2009, and the Colombo Declaration, adopted at the fourth South
Asian Conference on Sanitation, in 2011,
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”,
Recalling World Health Assembly resolution 64/24 of May 2011, in which the
Assembly urged Member States to, inter alia, “ensure that national health strategies
contribute to the realization of water- and sanitation-related Millennium Development
Goals while coming in support to the progressive realization of the human right to water
and sanitation that entitles everyone, without discrimination, to water and sanitation that is
sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable for personal and domestic
uses”;
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 five 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,
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 Special Rapporteur on the right to safe
drinking water and sanitation, including the progress in collecting good practices, the
comprehensive, transparent and inclusive consultations conducted with relevant and
interested actors from all regions for her thematic reports and collection of good practices,
as well as the undertaking of country missions;
2