خلاصة:
This paper deals with the legal status of the right to water in international law and also its protection through the precedent of water-related international investment tribunals and domestic judicial ones. Right to water has not yet been recognized in a universal treaty but the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognized it in General Comment No. 15 as a separate right. This was further buttressed by both UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council resolutions in 2010. This right while facing ambiguities in terms of content, scope and judicial enforcement but the increasing attempts by the States to incorporate it into their national statutes and the supervisory mechanisms adopted by the Human Rights Council all implying that this right is legal and binding. This claim is also reinforced by international customary law. In the end, the author explored the recognition of this right in light of some water-related investment arbitrations to show that how tribunals applied both the right to water and foreign investors’ rights in parallel and with the same weight.
ملخص الجهاز:
2. The second international convention that explicitly mentions it is the “Convention on the Rights of the Child,” which in Articles 2 and 24 explicitly obliges member states to ensure the right to health of children through measures including combating disease and malnutrition by providing safe drinking water.
The question often raised is why, during the drafting of the Social Covenant, despite the proposal, the right to water was not included in paragraph 1 of Article 11, while less important elements of an adequate standard of living, such as clothing and adequate housing, were explicitly mentioned (Riedel, 2005: 595).
In a way, any other interpretation would be contrary to the purpose and subject matter of paragraph 1 of Article 11 of the Social Rights Covenant, and it seems that inferring the right to water from the right to an adequate standard of living is reasonable and correct; As the Special Rapporteur on the right to housing has also declared the right to water as a fundamental element for realizing the right to housing (UN Doc) .
The African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, relying on implicit references to the right to water in the regional document, ruled in the Zaire case that Zaire’s failure to provide basic services, including safe drinking water and electricity, and the shortage of medicine constituted a violation of Article 16, namely the right to health (Afr. Comm.
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