Rebecca Schiel, Bruce Wilson, Malcolm Langford (2020)
LSE Human Rights Blog
This blog post is an output of LawTransform’s project Elevating water rights to human rights: Has it strengthened marginalized peoples’ claim for water?.
Water is undoubtedly essential beyond a pandemic, yet globally, three out of ten individuals lack access to safe drinking water (SDG). Populations lacking access to reliable, clean water are at a greater disadvantage in the current fight against COVID-19.
Authors’ research suggests that rather than pinning hopes for improved water access and quality on the constitutionalization of rights encompassing water access, activists should instead increase focus on democratic governance to realize human rights goals. This is especially relevant as we see countries across the world impose states of emergency, resulting in limits on civil (and even political) rights. In the midst of the fight against COVID-19, backsliding on democratic governance can negatively affect access to water.
The full blog post is available via the link below.
Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/humanrights/2020/04/16/the-human-right-to-water-in-a-global-pandemic/