Video 4-6 Information treatment Case 4: UN Declaration on the Human Right to Water

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From the course by University of Manchester

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2: Developing Effective Interventions

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University of Manchester

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2: Developing Effective Interventions

10 ratings

Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 2 is our second MOOC in a two-part sequence, and looks at ‘Developing Effective Interventions’. Here we invite you to develop analytical skills and deep understanding about a complex, controversial policy problem – one with no simple, easy answers. About half a billion people on our planet still lack access to improved water supplies and about two billion do not have improved sanitation services, leading to an unknown but very large number of avoidable deaths each year from water-related diseases. Millions of dollars are spent on avoidable health care expenditures, and people – mostly women – spend many billions of hours carrying water from sources outside the home. Reducing these costs is a major global challenge for us all in the 21st century. Join us to explore the challenging and complex political, economic, social, and technical dimensions of the policy interventions that donors, national governments and water utilities use to address this challenge. This second MOOC consists of the following seven sessions: • Session 1: Introduction and how our ‘ancient instincts’ affect water policy interventions. • Session 2: Planning better policy interventions: Roles, features and examples of planning protocols. • Session 3: Water pricing, tariff design and subsidies. • Session 4: Providing information to households and communities to improve water and sanitation conditions. • Session 5: Changing the institutions that deliver water and sanitation services: Privatization in developing countries. • Session 6: Changing institutions: Lessons from the UK water privatization story. • Session 7: Changing institutions: Improving regulation of the water and sanitation sector. Your instructors for this course have worked in and studied this sector for many years. Professor Dale Whittington has worked on water and sanitation policy and planning issues for over 40 years in more than two dozen low and middle-income countries. Dr Duncan Thomas has worked in the UK and European water sectors for 15 years, focusing on overcoming barriers to technological, organizational, regulatory and policy innovations. Please watch this introductory video outlining the course: https://youtu.be/KkBmo3EKkkI

From the lesson

Providing information to households and communities to improve water and sanitation conditions

Video 4-0 Introduction to information treatments as a policy intervention11:13

Video 4-1 Information treatment Case 1: In-house water quality testing18:04

Video 4-2 Information treatment Case 2: Information provision via water bills and evidence from OWASA, Chapel Hill, USA11:54

Video 4-3 Information treatment Case 3: Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)17:38

Video 4-4 Information treatment Case 3: Evidence from CLTS in Mali, West Africa7:11

Video 4-5 Information treatment Case 4: Information provision via water bills in Jerico, Colombia13:17

Video 4-6 Information treatment Case 4: UN Declaration on the Human Right to Water8:03

Video 4-7 Conversation with Barbara Evans on CLTS41:14

Video 4-8 Conservation with Kamal Kar on CLTS (in 7 parts)64:18

Meet the Instructors

Dr Duncan Thomas
Lecturer
Alliance Manchester Business School
Prof Dale Whittington
Professor
Manchester Business School

This video will describe a task that we'd like you to do in the discussion forums

for this session.

The subject is the UN Decoration on the human right to water and sanitation.

When we teach us material in a live classroom and at universities,

we typically organized this discussion in a form of a debate with

the four side in an against side.

In this MOOC, we'd like you to form hold a debate in a discussion forms for

these session.

Here is the proposition we'd like you to debate.

The United Nations Declaration establishing a human right to water and

sanitation is a big step forward.

And will result in many more poor households receiving improved water and

sanitation services in the future.

In the discussion forum,

you can choose which side of the debate you want to argue, for or against.

If you take the for position, you should argue that the United Nations Declaration

of the Human Right to Water and Sanitation is a big step forward.

And will result in many more poor households receiving improved water and

sanitation services in the future then would otherwise have been the case.

If you take the against position, you should argue that this is not true.

Please be sure to read the 2010 UN Resolution about the human right to water

and sanitation, which we have provided to you.

There are two interesting papers that can give you some background on some of

the different perspectives about the UN Declaration.

Both of these were published in the Journal Water Policy.

Also if you Google human right to water and

Catarina de Albuquerque, you'll find a huge amount of material.

Catarina de Albuquerque,

was the UN Special Rapporteur into the human right water from 2008 to 2014,

where also lots of video materials in this topic on YouTube.

As background for your debate, in this video, I'd like to say a few general

things about the assignment of rights as one kind of policy intervention.

Another way of think about the establishment of a right to water is it

gives the claimant, the person who wants the improved water and

sanitation services power to make a claim on the duty holder.

And the duty holder has assigned a liability,

there's a new claim that is being made on his financial resources.

For example, the government of the United States has been very careful not to

consent to any legal liability as a duty holder.

The United States has joined the consensus on a number of United Nation

resolutions that recognize the human right to water and sanitation.

There's part of achieving an adequate standard of living that's progressively

realized.

In other words, it has accepted the human right to water as an aspirational goal,

but with no legally binding obligations for the United States.

More generally,

there are three main grounds on which a presumed duty holder can deny a claim

that someone has a human right to water and a claim on his resources.

First, someone might agree that the claimant has a right, but

deny that he is the duty holder.

In other words, the liability of the ride falls on others.

From my perspective,

this is close to the position of the United States on the human right to water.

Second, a duty holder might deny the actual existence of the right,

questioning for example, the legitimacy.

Or standing of the United Nations, or even his national government to create such

a new right or entitlement to improve water and sanitation services.

Third, a duty holder might acknowledge that a particular kind of right exists,

but deny that a specific individual or group can claim it.

For example, a particular group of claimants might be judged to be too rich.

Or already have sufficient water service to impose a liability

on the duty holder to provide better water and sanitation services.

This raises another interesting issue that you may choose to discuss in your debate.

What level of service is sufficient to satisfy the human right to water and

sanitization?

For example, is a system of public taps sufficient?

If the stage is the duty holder can it impose a per bucket price for

water from public taps.

And still say that it satisfies the human right to water if claimants say,

the price is to high.

What if the state decides to provide free public taps, but

a group of claimants says they do not want public taps?

Instead they want piped private connections for the exclusive use or

household members.

And they say they would not use free public taps and

that the vendors they use now are expensive.

And they know the waters contaminated, but they are convenient.

Should the state be obliged to provide a lower level of service

that households do not want in order to satisfy the human right to water?

Or is the state obliged to provide subsidized water from private pipe

connections?

There are also interesting questions about the dynamic obligations of duty

holders that you may want to address in the debate.

For example, suppose an international organization accepts it.

It is a duty holder and provides freely trains to pour rural households in

a region were open defecation is coming.

For argument sake, let's assume that real households stop open defecations practices

and use the donors latrines.

But suppose that after the latrines are filled up,

households do not have the money to have them emptied or

simply choose not to do so, and return to open defecation.

Is the duty holder's obligation fulfilled, or

is the donor obliged to arrange for the latrines to be emptied?

In other words, does the obligation exist into perpetuity or is it time limited?

Another question you may choose to discuss in the debate is the legal enforceability

of the human right to water.

Some have argued that poor households without sufficient water and

sanitation services can sue their national governments for

the enforcement of their rights.

This could be either in the national courts or

at the International Court of Justice, at the Hague.

Would you support such legal action?

Do you think the courts have an important role to play in deciding on the scale and

type of investments needed to improve water and sanitation services?

Another area for your discussion forums,

might be the distinction between negative rights and positive rights.

The United States Bill of Rights provides examples of negative rights,

things a state should not do.

Because the right holder has the liberty or freedom to undertake these actions.

For example, in the United States a bill of rights protects citizens

form intrusion by the state on freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Similarly citizens in the United States have a right not

be subject to unreasonable search and

seizure, double jeopardy in a court of law, and self-incrimination.

On the other hand, the human right to water and

sanitation is best characterized as a positive right.

The state or duty holder has to take a positive action to do something,

in this case, to build and maintain water and sanitation services.

In the case of the human right to water, the duty holder has to spend funds to

ensure that the claimant has the benefit stream of water and sanitation services.

Of course, the state may also have to spend some funds to ensure negative rights

are protected.

But certainly not to the same extent as the provision of a daily service to

all the individuals in a population.

For example, people may never need a jury trial,

even though they have a right to one.

But people need water and sanitation services every day of their lives.

If you're interested in pursuing the implications of this line of inquiry in

the discussion forums, you may find it useful to read Isaiah Berlin's

seminal essay Two Concepts of Liberty.

This essay was first presented as a lecture at Oxford University in 1958 and

is widely available.

One place you can find it is in Isaiah Berlin's book, Four Essays on Liberty.

It is one of the four essays.

We hope you have fun debating these issues on the discussion forums.

Good luck.

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