Social Forum: Water for Human Rights and Sustainable Development
The human right to safe drinking water and sanitation is strictly linked to the implementation of the right to development, Ms. Maria Mercedes Rossi (APG23) underlined in the keynote panel of the 2022 UN Social Forum.
The 2022 UN Social Forum, which took place in Geneva on 3 and 4 November, focused on Water for human rights and sustainable development: good practices, lessons learned and challenges in the implementation of the International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development”.
The two-day event was organised in several panel discussions, each treating the interrelation between Water and, namely, Climate, Health, Development, Peace and Cooperation, and Governance, concluding with a reflection on Partnerships and Commitments to Action. The underlying idea was to explore how the violation of the Right to Water can affect and is tightly interrelated with several other human rights.
APG23, like every year, contributed to the discussion on several occasions, stressing important points regarding the Right to Water and Sanitation and Sustainable Development.
The main focus of the interventions of APG23 was on the interlinkage between the right to water and the right to development. Indeed, APG23’s Main Representative, Ms. Maria Mercedes Rossi, in the keynote panel underlined that a strict link exists between the implementation of the right to development and the respect, protection and fulfilment of the right to safe drinking water and sanitation.
As a matter of fact, the Declaration on the Right to Development explicitly mentions the «inalienable right to full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources», and water is the first and the most important of all natural resources.
The situation of the Mapuche people, the largest Indigenous group in Chile, serves as a great example. APG23 brought forward its experience on the ground, claiming that mega-projects carried out in the ancestral lands of this indigenous group severely affect natural resources and the ecosystem in which they live, especially polluting water resources. For APG23, the right of Indigenous communities to free, prior and informed consent must be always respected, also considering that “development should be intended not only in its economic dimension but in the entirety of its social, environmental, cultural, and political scopes” (as stated in one of the interventions by APG23 representatives).
In conclusion, APG23 underlined three critical steps in order to reduce key gaps in water governance and ensure universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation: first, prioritizing human rights over profits; second, democratizing governance of natural resources and, finally, linking environmental health and human well-being.
The final appeal of APG23 was to address the deep root causes of the violations of the right to water and sanitation in the UN 2023 Water Conference, to be held in New York in March 2023, and to which the Social Forum has been convened as a contribution.
