Are Water and Sanitation Human Rights?
July 28, 2010 | 2 Comments
Please, someone explain to me why it’s a bad thing that Canada did not vote in favour of the United Nations resolution declaring water and sanitation a human right? Dear lord but we abuse that term, “human right”.
Follow up question for those who support the declaration: did you – as one might infer from Maude Barlow’s comments – think we didn’t really have to ensure clean drinking water for First Nations communities until this resolution passed?
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2 Responses to “Are Water and Sanitation Human Rights?”
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July 29th, 2010 @ 9:19 am
Positive rights, yee gods, crazy as a monkey on a trike.
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July 29th, 2010 @ 2:15 pm
Correct me if I am mistaken, but Article 25 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights already enshrines water and sanitation, as basic human rights:
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Canadians should be more concerned about the fluoridation of our water supply; the premeditated practice of poisoning our bodies to ensure a diminished intellectual capacity must be our primary concern. There is an abundance of factual scientific evidence, which denotes the effects of the controlled addition of fluoride into our water.
Governments and International Bodies have been accustomed to arguing semantics, while blatantly ignoring the facts.
I would like to know what positive effects will arise from the codification of water and sanitation, as a Human Right. Is it safe to presume that First Nations communities will experience a sudden transformation of their current abyss? Or will it prevent another Walkerton disaster?
The prima facie for all matters relating to ‘human rights’ is merely an attempt to broadcast some form of sincerity towards the lots of impoverished masses; only when governments globally grasp the significance of a human life, irrespective of its form, can we ever aspire for the application of true human rights to the masses.
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