A/HRC/15/41
76.
Q.
A revised version of the draft guiding principles should:
•
Recall the immediate and progressive obligations of States with regard to the
right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, and the
fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.43
•
Recommend ensuring access to relevant livelihood opportunities for those
living in extreme poverty and reaffirm that States should “proactively engage
in activities intended to strengthen people’s access to and utilization of
resources”.44 This can include specific legislative, administrative and policy
measures to promote and ensure sustainable management of productive
resources by those living in extreme poverty.
•
Recommend revising and repealing discriminatory laws and related
administrative practices that impede the recognition of ownership of land and
resources by groups or individuals living in extreme poverty, particularly
women.
•
Recommend implementing effective land distribution and agrarian reform
programmes in areas where land concentration threatens access to livelihoods
for rural communities.
•
Recommend ensuring access to relevant financial resources, including bank
loans, mortgages and other forms of credit, by those living in extreme
poverty.
•
Recommend recognizing and compensating for the shortcomings of market
mechanisms in ensuring access to key entitlements such as staple foodstuffs.
Ensuring adequate distribution mechanisms that make such staples
physically and economically accessible to persons living in extreme poverty, in
a culturally acceptable way and without negatively impacting small farmers,
indigenous peoples, forest dwellers, pastoralists or local subsistence
fishermen.
Right to safe drinking water and sanitation
77.
Persons living in extreme poverty are disproportionally affected by limited access to
safe drinking water45 with life-threatening consequence.46 Persons living in poverty, in
particular women and children, bear the brunt of lacking access to safe drinking water and
adequate sanitation. Unsafe water and inadequate sanitation compromise dignity, seriously
affect health status throughout the life cycle, and hold back poverty reduction, and
economic growth.47
78.
A revised version of the draft guiding principles should:
•
43
44
45
46
47
20
Reaffirm State obligations with regard to ensuring access to safe drinking
water and adequate sanitation.
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 11.
Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 12 (1999) on the right to
adequate food, para. 15.
A/HRC/6/3, page 14.
UN Millennium Project 2005, Health, Dignity, and Development: What Will It Take? Task Force on
Water and Sanitation.
United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2006. Beyond Scarcity:
Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).