UN recognition of right to water and sanitation — never too late to say thanks again!

Although it has been nearly two weeks since the United Nations General Assembly declared that  safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right many emails and tweets are still being sent around celebrating this historic resolution. 

It is still very exciting!

FAN members and others who contacted your governments – please take a moment out to thank yourselves again for your important role in this landmark decision! 

FAN welcomed the resolution, voted for by 122 countries, as it not only builds on the important work of FAN members and others in the sector who are working to secure these rights at the local, national and regional levels, it also builds on the work of the UN Independent Expert (IE) on human rights obligations related to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council in 2008. 

Importantly, the resolution did not neglect to mention sanitation. Diarrhoea, caused by lack of sanitation, is now the biggest killer of children under five in Africa. Although the resolution did not  recognize sanitation as a distinct right – the inclusion of sanitation is still significant, as nearly two fifths of the world’s population (2.6 billion people) do not have access to adequate sanitation. FAN will continue to work to have these rights affirmed separately.

Although no country voted against the resolution, it was unfortunately not passed by consensus – reflecting that perhaps the critical mass of political will on these issues does not yet exist. This in spite of the fact that at least 4,000 children die every day as a result of diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. 

Four thousand children a day. The biggest killer of children under five in Africa.

For these two reasons and many others, FAN will continue to work on the recognition of these human rights, as these rights and a rights based approach are critical to ensuring access to the billions currently living without sanitation and the millions without access to safe water. 

FAN will also continue our support for the efforts of the Independent Expert. Through country missions, wide consultation and serious discussion and debate, the IE has continued to expose the layers of issues related to these human rights and provide greater understanding of why these rights deserve recognition and what this means in practice. Undoubtedly, this work will continue to accelerate momentum towards rights and access for all.  

If you have your stories/questions/thoughts about working to secure the rights to sanitation and water where you are – please share!

Find out how your country representatives voted and tell them what you think! It is never too late to say thank you to those country representatives and let them know that they have your support.

Kolleen

Reflections on participation in the UN MDG hearings.

Lajana Manandhar, FANSA steering committee member and Country Convenor of FAN Nepal

The following is a second guest post from Lajana Manandhar, FANSA steering committee member and Country Convenor of FAN Nepal pictured right, about her reflections on her participation at the UN civil society consultation on the Millennium Development Goals

One questions stays with me after the hearings; I learnt that there are just so many and many networks and network of the networks of civil society organizations in this world.  Every one is working so hard to contribute in alleviating poverty and miseries from this world.  But little success we have made.  Why? Something somewhere must have gone wrong.

After thinking further on the MDG hearing at the UN, I can say that these are the key things that have learned from the experience:

• I felt that GCAP and Third world Networks are large global civil society organisations’ networks and we must be an active member of these networks to make an effective input in the policy influencing.  If FAN or FANSA was a part of these networks, impact will be certainly different.  The network of the networks will certainly carry a heavy weight with campaigning and help us to make new partners.

• Global level advocacy needs to be given a continuous push.  Never a one stop activity.  Many important high level meetings also seem to be taking place frequently these days.  We need to be very clear on our goal, agenda (demand for change) and strategy.  We need to be very clear on the link between regional and global policy influencing.

• Presentations at a high level do not necessarily need to be bland technical demands, although the presenters were asked and advised to present in that way.  Some of the presentations made in a form of emotional personal story telling were touching, highly appreciated and left an impact on their audience.  This automatically tells the listeners what to do and what not to do.  I learnt that demand can be effectively put in different forms, and I think that not reading directly from my notes allowed for a more receptive audience.

• There wasn’t enough focus on water and sanitation issues. We should be doing more to influence elites into prioritizing water supply and sanitation as an urgent issue. Immediately after the session 3, few CSO leaders came to me and appreciated the statements I had made.  One of them had said, “Your two questions are still ringing in my ear.”  I had asked two simple questions in the plenary if they had any idea about how many people worldwide had defecated in an open space that morning and how many children die worldwide every year due to the lack of proper sanitation.

• I learnt that being stationed in Kathmandu, heading Lumanti and FAN Nepal and also being a steering committee member of FANSA, I have no mechanisms to influence global policy other than signing petition letters at the moment. I see a large gap. We should be contributing to policy at the country level and in South Asia as well, which will help us at the global level. We need variety of different approaches.

• I understand now that there is a big opportunity and a lot to be done to take it as the MDG summit is just around the corner.  But we should not stop there as we need to think beyond summits as well.  I am happy to get involved in any important process that I can make useful contribution.

So, we can be clear with our demands, push for policy influence at the country and regional levels as well as get a place in the global networks, and keep track of the many meetings at high levels so we can maintain a continuous push. We can also now think of how what ways there are to influence.

Partiipation at the Hearing has been a great experience and I would like to thank everyone who had supported me, especially FAN Global and FANSA.

Filling the gaps at the UN civil society consultation on the MDGs

The following is a guest post from Lajana Manandhar, FANSA steering committee member and Country Convenor of FAN Nepal pictured right, about her participation at the UN civil society consultation on the Millennium Development Goals

This is the first time that I am writing to share with you my feelings after participating and speaking at the UN civil society hearing on the Millennium Development Goals (MGDs) in the General Assembly (14 – 15 June 2010).  Let me sum up my feelings in a few key points for your clear understanding on my experience from the Hearing.

Southern CSO voice influencing and collaborating at the United Nations

Lajana Manandhar, FANSA steering committee member and Country Convenor of FAN Nepal, is making most of her opportunity to input in to the UN General Assembly CSO Hearings on MDG+10 summit this week in order to influence the preparatory process for the High-level Plenary Meeting on 20-22 September 2010. She is currently in New York participating in the convention.