Draft Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation: Call for comments

Your comments and recommendations of good practices are requested by 27 August 2007 on the draft Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation, which is accessible at www.cohre.org/manualrtws. Please contact Virginia Roaf at water@cohre.org to provide comments or to request copies of the draft in word format. Those attending the Stockholm Water Week conference are invited to participate in a review session on the draft Manual on Tuesday 14 August 2007, 5.15 – 6.45 pm in room 357, Norra Latin. (Note that as this session was organised in late July, it is not listed in the official conference programme).

There is growing interest in the contributions of human rights to efforts to extend access to water and sanitation, but little practical information is available at present on how this can be achieved. The purpose of this Manual is to address this information gap, and to offer insights into measures to address practical difficulties such as resource constraints, on the inability of low-income users to pay for water, weak institutional capacity and the need to strengthen the political will to implement the right to water.

The Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation has the following objectives:

1.    Explain the key aspects of the right to water and sanitation and clarify their implications for governments.

2.    Describe a range of practical policy measures that could be adopted by governments, in particular those in low-income countries, to achieve the right to water and sanitation in the shortest possible time.

3.    Illustrate examples of policy measures that have been taken to achieve particular components of the right to water and sanitation.

4.    Provide a check-list by which governments can assess their achievements in relation to the right to water and sanitation.

The draft Manual is the product of collaboration between the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) Right to Water Programme, United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch (WSIB), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Programme, and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC). It has received financial support towards production costs from the partners listed above as well as the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the World Health Organization (WHO). The draft - prepared by COHRE’s Right to Water Programme – remains a work in progress. The contents of the publication will be revised based on comments.