And yet we have. Twice. In July the UK abstained on a UN resolution tabled by the president of Bolivia recognising access to water and sanitation as a human right, due to its status as the second biggest cause of under-five deaths in the world. Then just a month ago, Her Majesty’s government ‘disassociated itself from a Human Rights Council resolution that made this legally binding’ – the diplomatic equivalent of picking up your football and storming home.

As highlighted in my last post, development language is always difficult to follow, much like Whitehall-speak. So a political commitment to speak up for human rights way have been mistranslated as an instruction to speak against, and our lovely foreign office aggressively lobbied against both these resolutions.

Now the UK stands alone alongside only 12 other infamous countries* to not recognise access to sanitation as a legally binding human right – a situation ‘deplored’ by Amnesty International and described as ‘no less then shocking’ by the international Freshwater Action Network.

Surprising also, given that just days earlier Andrew Mitchell spoke strongly about the importance of water and sanitation at the Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York.

The UK opposing a UN resolution wasn’t a news story in the way it is when Madonna adopts a baby. But it matters because development is about much more than signing cheques to build schools and medicines. Fundamentally it is about the same things as fighting for social justice in the UK – power, equality and accountability, all things that come under a human rights lens.

Lack of access to water and sanitation is a perfect example. Those who suffer most are also the most powerless – the girls who drop out of school because of poor sanitation facilities, the rural women kept out of work because they must walk hours every day for water, the women in slums who risk sexual assault when travelling to distant toilets every night, the 1.5 million children under-5 who die of diarrhoeal diseases every year.

Because they lack power, they are often ignored. National policies can be blind to the poorest communities, donor funding weakest in the poorest countries, and water sources threatened by resource-hungry industries paying scant regard to the needs of local populations.

Yet where human rights approaches have been implemented, albeit imperfectly, the potential is clear. South Africa’s Water Services Act, for example, enshrines their citizens right to a minimum provision of water, and has been instrumental in driving the government to expand and improve services to its people. Wells and latrines are no longer the in the realm of charity, but in the realm of justice.

Of course resolutions themselves don’t build wells and latrines, but the tangible measures that follow – inclusive national policies, specific focuses on marginalised groups, mechanisms for legal recourse, and effective monitoring systems – can help to build effective states responsive to their citizens, surely the real goal of international development.

Tackling poverty means promoting human rights, not just stealing its language. Joining the rest of the world in legally recognising the human right to water and sanitation, and making it real, would be a good first step.

*The other countries are Israel, Tonga, Canada, Albania, Austria, Belize, Czech Republic, Malta, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey and Turkmenistan.

Steve Cockburn is an anti-poverty campaigner and a member of Labour Campaign for International Development

Friday 15 October is Blog Action Day, with thousands of bloggers focusing on access to water and sanitation in the developing world.

Take action on access to water and sanitation at www.endwaterpoverty.org  

To read more on the link between poverty and human rights, read a report by the UN Millennium Campaign, and Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity campaign. 

Photo: Tanya Puntti