NEW YORK, New York, July 29, 2010 (ENS) - Access to clean, safe drinking water is now an official basic human right everywhere in the world, like the rights to life, health, food and adequate housing. The water rights resolution was approved late Wednesday by the United Nations General Assembly, not unanimously, but without opposition.
Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation
is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the United Nations General Assembly declared Wednesday, voting to expand the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to include the right to clean water and sanitation.
The 192-member Assembly called on United Nations member states and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other resources to help poorer countries scale up their efforts to provide clean, accessible and affordable drinking water and sanitation for everyone.
Introduced by Bolivia, the resolution received 122 votes in favor and zero votes against, while 41 countries abstained from voting.
The text of the resolution expresses deep concern that an estimated 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and a total of more than 2.6 billion people, 40 percent of the global population, do not have access to basic sanitation. About 1.5 million children under the age of five die each year because of water-related and sanitation-related diseases.
Children draw water from a public well, Uganda, September 2009. (Photo by African Well Fund) |
"Diarrhea is the second most important cause of the death of children below the age of five," said Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations, introducing the resolution. "The lack of access to drinking water kills more children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined."
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