The human right to water - normative foundations and ethical implications

Abstract

This paper looks into the normative foundations and the ethical implications of a human right to water, endorsed as recently as 2002 by the UN Committee on Human Rights. The paper argues that a human right to drinking water is justifiable as fundamental moral right guaranteeing basic conditions for mere survival. This is less clear in the case of a right to productive water, which verges on a much broader concept of social and economic rights. There are ongoing controversies about the allocation problem of these rights: Who has to deliver on them? To avoid the allocation problem, the paper will examine whether lack of access to water can be deemed a violation of other moral rights. But although there are cases where transnational corporations harm the poor by polluting their water resources or by sustaining or initiating harmful forms of privatisation, the water crisis cannot be solely traced back to a problem of harmful forms of globalisation alone. There is, thus, need for positive efforts from the developed countries to make safe water for all a reality.