Tempting as it may be to bask in the recent description of Canada by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, as a “pillar of the UN”, this year’s World Water Day reminds Canadians that our record in the international human rights system is far from perfect.

For the last two years, Canada has been the only state to refuse to recognize the right to water at the annual UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva. This, despite the fact that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has listed basic human needs, including water, as one of Canada’s six priorities for international assistance. Canada’s statements that there is not a human right to water in international law is puzzling and inconsistent with other policy positions taken.

Such an attitude, if not modified, may also prove to be somewhat of an embarrassment when Justice Louise Arbour of Canada’s Supreme Court assumes her appointment later this year as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

“Access to safe water is a fundamental human need and therefore a basic human right,” Kofi Annan announced in his message on World Water Day in 2001. “Contaminated water jeopardizes both the physical and social health of all people. It is an affront to human dignity.”

Despite the fact that the world’s governments subscribed to the Millennium Development Goals’ objective to reduce by half the number of people without access to water by 2015, in 2004, 1.1 billion people still lack access to clean water. Each day, some 6,000 children in developing countries perish due to lack of clean water and sanitation. These deaths are not due to water scarcity, given that water for basic personal and domestic uses is often far less than 10% of total use. Rather, they are testimony to the lack of adequate efforts at the national and international level to ensure each human being this basic right.

Violations of the right to water occur on a daily basis. Some of the poorest people in the world, living on less than $1 a day, are denied water supply because they live in informal settlements, commonly referred to as slums. Water sources used by indigenous communities are polluted. Governments refuse to use their available resources on low cost targeted programs to benefit the poorest and instead use these on expensive high profile mega-projects.

Canada’s opposition to the right to water in fact bolsters the negligence of governments who fail to live up to their responsibilities to their citizens. Enhanced, international recognition of the right to water would be a tool for poor communities to claim their right to the most basic and fundamental of human needs.

This opposition to the right to water flies in the face of some of the most basic stated tenets of Canadian policy: in subscribing to the Millennium Development Goals, Canada has pledged to play its part in ensuring the basic needs of some of the world’s poorest people are met. What can be more basic than the human right to water? There is little sense in providing millions in development aid to finance infrastructure projects that will provide access to water, and yet at the same time, argue that governments are not obliged to implement the right to water for their citizens. Where is the policy coherence in this?

Despite the refusal to recognize the right to water, paradoxically, Canada has, in fact, already committed itself to this right — both in the international treaties it has ratified, and in the declarations of intent it has made. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ratified by Canada in 1976, recognizes the right to an adequate standard of living, which implicitly includes water. Aspects of the right to water are also contained in the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, both ratified by Canada. Canada was also a party to the 1977 Mar del Plata Declaration, and the 1994 Declaration at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, both of which affirmed water as a human right and an integral part of adequate living standards.

One rationale offered by the Government of Canada to justify its position is that it does not wish to be bound by more international standards, yet its obligations under the right to water would be relatively straightforward and welcome. The Government and the provinces should, for example, ensure that water quality is protected; that all Canadians have access to affordable clean water, a common problem on native reserves; that an adequate proportion of international assistance goes towards water development, and that such assistance benefits the most vulnerable. These are not onerous obligations — they are good for Canada, and for the world. However, due to unwillingness to be bound by any commitments in this area, the Government of Canada has chosen to reject the claims of the poor and vulnerable of the world to the right to water.

Last week, the UN Human Rights Commission began its 60th session in Geneva. It offers Canada a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of the 1.1 billion people in the world who lack access to clean water. By endorsing the right to water, we will strengthen the international human rights system and ultimately permit poor communities to struggle for their own legal entitlements and thus their dignity, rather than depend only on charitable handouts. It is time Canada accepted this, and stopped standing in the way of the right to water.

March 22, 2004