Oxfam Recognizes World Water Day on March 22

Access to water is a basic human need and a fundamental human right. Yet in our increasingly prosperous world, more than 1 billion people are denied the right to clean water and 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation.

These numbers capture only one dimension of the problem. Every year, 1.8 million children die as a result of diarrhoea and other diseases caused by unclean water and poor sanitation. At the start of the 21st century unclean water is the world's second biggest killer of children.

Every day, millions of women and young girls collect water for their families—a ritual that reinforces gender inequalities in employment and education. Meanwhile, the ill health associated with deficits in water and sanitation undermines productivity and economic growth, reinforcing the deep inequalities that characterize current patterns of globalization and trapping vulnerable households in cycles of poverty.

Oxfam Canada calls on the Government of Canada to recognize public access to clean water as a basic human right.  In doing so, Canada would conform to the following statement issued by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at its 29^th session in November 2002: Water is a limited natural resource and a public good fundamental for life and health. The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity.