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CESR Work on the Right to a Healthy Environment

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CESR promotes arights-based approach to environmental advocacy. Our efforts inenvironmental advocacy have fallen into two main areas: reportingenvironmental health hazards in Latin America, and promoting the rightto water as a fundamental part of the right to a healthy environment.Please click here for more on environmental health hazards. Please see below for more on CESR's work on the right to water.


CESR was the first human rights NGO to articulate what the right to water should entail. In 2002, CESR collaborated with the World Health Organization, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and other NGOs to produce a guide to the right to water. Click here to read the report

Access to Adequate Clean Water is a Human Right

Water is a basic element of all life. Over 70 percent of the humanbody is made up of water. While a human being may survive without foodfor several days, water deprivation can kill a person within a matterof hours. Water is also a requirement for the most basic activitiesvital to sustaining human life, including agriculture, cooking, andsanitation. Yet while water sustains life, it can also bring death ifcontaminated. Some of the deadliest diseases, which kill millionsaround the world each year, are carried in unclean water. Access toadequate amounts of clean water, for both consumption and sanitation,is a prerequisite for a healthy life. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares, ???all human beings have the right to life???; this includes the right to water.

Most water shortages and water contamination stem from human actionsor neglect. However, the problems of water supply and sanitation areoften portrayed as stemming only from natural phenomena such asdrought, climate change, or seasonal weather patterns. Recognizing ahuman right to water is an important step toward holdingdecision-makers accountable and recognizing the social and politicaldimensions of water use and management.

Several countries have already recognized some form of the right to water in their national Constitutions. Click here for a list of those countries.

Although the international community recognized the right to water,as a component of the right to life, over fifty years ago, millionsaround the world are still denied access to adequate amounts of cleanwater. In arid regions, states have regulated access to water as a wayof controlling marginalized groups. Reclaiming water as a human rightreframes the terms of debate around water scarcity. While human actionsor neglect cause most water shortages and contamination of waterresources, the problems of water supply and sanitation are oftenportrayed as stemming only from natural phenomena such as drought,climate change, or seasonal weather patterns. Recognizing a human rightto water is an important step toward holding decision-makersaccountable and recognizing the social and political dimensions ofwater use and management.

CESR Fact Sheets on the Right to Water:

Thirsting For Justice: Violations of the Human Right to Water in Palestine[pdf 5.84 mb]
Control over water resources has been a central point of conflictbetween Israelis and Palestinians since Israel was established in 1948.In spring 2003, CESR collaborated with local Palestinian NGOs, including the Palestinian Environmental NGONetwork (PENGON) and the Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), to documentviolations of Palestinians??? human right to water. In addition to theabove report on water in Palestine, CESR has produced two fact sheets on water in Palestine:

Report of the International Fact-Finding Mission on Water Sector Reform in Ghana[pdf 418 kb]
In August 2002, Public Citizen, along with other NGOs,including the Center for Economic and Social Rights, conducted afact-finding mission to examine the impacts of privatization in Ghana.

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