A/HRC/RES/21/2
21 and the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, adopted at the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992, and the Habitat
Agenda, adopted at the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in June
1996, Assembly resolutions 54/175 of 17 December 1999 on the right to development, and
58/217 of 23 December 2003 proclaiming the International Decade for Action, “Water for
Life” (2005-2015), 65/153 of 20 December 2010, establishing the follow-up to the
International Year of Sanitation, 65/ 154 of 20 December 2010, establishing 2013 as the
International Year of Water Cooperation, and the outcome document entitled “The future
we want”, adopted at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de
Janeiro on 22 June 2012 and by the Assembly in its resolution 66/288 of 27 July 2012,
Noting with interest relevant commitments and initiatives promoting the human right
to safe drinking water and sanitation, including the Abuja Declaration, adopted at the first
Africa-South America Summit, in 2006, the message from Beppu, adopted at the first AsiaPacific Water Summit, in 2007, the Delhi Declaration, adopted at the third South Asian
Conference on Sanitation, in 2008, the Sharm el-Sheikh Final Document, adopted at the
Fifteenth Summit Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Movement of NonAligned Countries, in 2009, and the Colombo Declaration, adopted at the fourth South
Asian Conference on Sanitation, in 2011,
Bearing in mind the commitments made by the international community to achieve
fully the Millennium Development Goals, and stressing in that context the resolve of Heads
of State and Government, as expressed in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, to
halve, by 2015, the proportion of people unable to reach or afford safe drinking water, and
to halve the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation, as agreed in the Plan of
Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (“Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation”) and the outcome document adopted at the High-level Plenary Meeting of
the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals
entitled “Keeping the promise: united to achieve the Millennium Development Goals”,
Recalling World Health Assembly resolution 64/24 of May 2011, in which the
Assembly urged Member States to, inter alia, “ensure that national health strategies
contribute to the realization of water- and sanitation-related Millennium Development
Goals while coming in support to the progressive realization of the human right to water
and sanitation that entitles everyone, without discrimination, to water and sanitation that is
sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable for personal and domestic
uses”,
Recalling in particular paragraph 5 (f) of Human Rights Council resolution 16/2, in
which the Council encouraged the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking
water and sanitation, in fulfilling her mandate, to make recommendations for goals beyond
the 2015 Millennium Development Goals process with special regard to the full realization
of the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, and also to continue to make more
recommendations that could help the realization of the Millennium Development Goals, in
particular of Goal 7, as appropriate,
Deeply concerned that approximately 780 million people still lack access to
improved water sources and that more than 2.5 billion people do not have access to
improved sanitation as defined by the World Health Organization and the United Nations
Children’s Fund in their 2012 Joint Monitoring Programme report, concerned that these
figures do not fully capture the water safety aspect and equity, equality and nondiscrimination issues as indicated by that report, and therefore underestimate the numbers
of those without access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and alarmed that, every year,
approximately 1.5 million children under five years of age die and 443 million school days
are lost as a result of water- and sanitation-related diseases,
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