The Human Right to Water in Law and Implementation

Laws

Norbert Brunner¹  Vijay Mishra¹  Ponnusamy Sakthivel¹  Markus Starkl¹ 

[1] ¹CEMDS (Centre for Environmental Management and Decision Support), Gregor Mendel Str. 33, 1180 Vienna, Austria

关键词: access to improved water and sanitation services;    cross country comparison;    governance indicators;    goals for infrastructure funding;    mathematical policy modeling;    progressive realization of social and economic human rights;   

DOI  :  10.3390/laws4030413

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Recent concerns about alleged insufficient water provision to the poor in Detroit, USA, has put the Human Right to Water (HRW) into the international discussion. The paper asks: “To what extent did international human rights treaties make HRW judiciable?” and “How did government policies implement it?” In a cross-country comparison of performance indicators, merely accepting HRW has not been helpful in promoting affordable access to potable water or sanitation facilities close to the home, amongst the reasons being deficiencies in water-governance. Case-law confirmed that with respect to affordable access HRW obliges governments to a “progressive realization” only, also in countries accepting HRW (India, South Africa). The paper focuses on the resulting positive state obligation to establish funding programs for better water and sanitation services and analyzes funding policies by a mathematical model of policy goals. It identifies two viable goals namely the successful support for the poor, as in developing countries, and the most economic use of public funds, as in industrialized countries. Other goals conceivable for the model have been tried in the past and failed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.