The Global Recognition of Water as a Human Right: Implications for India

Water is so essential to human life that its absence cannot be separated from the denial of life itself. Yet for decades, international law treated water primarily as a resource to be managed – not a right to be guaranteed. That changed in 2010, when the United Nations formally declared access to safe drinking water a human right. For India, a country that holds 18% of the world’s population but only 4% of global renewable freshwater resources, this global shift carries profound legal and policy implications.

How the international community came to recognize water as a human right 🔗

The journey to international recognition was long and deliberate. For much of the twentieth century, water access was framed as a development challenge – a matter of infrastructure, not rights. The first serious legal groundwork came from the broader human rights architecture. Article 25 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) recognized the right to an adequate standard of living, which scholars argued implicitly covered water. The 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), particularly Articles 11 and 12 on the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health, provided further textual footing.

The clearest early articulation came in 2002, when the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights issued General Comment 15. It defined the human right to water as entitling everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible, and affordable water for personal and domestic use – enough to prevent dehydration, reduce water-related disease, and meet basic hygiene needs. This was not yet a binding resolution, but it created the normative vocabulary that would define everything that followed.

Two other treaties independently reinforced the right: the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) both explicitly recognized the right to water and sanitation, particularly for women in rural areas and for children.

The landmark 2010 UN General Assembly resolution 🔗

On 28 July 2010, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 64/292, explicitly recognizing the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation for the first time in binding international law. The resolution was adopted with 122 countries in favour, zero against, and 41 abstentions. It acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights, and called upon states to provide the financial and technical resources needed to scale up access.

The resolution set out concrete parameters: every person should have access to between 50 and 100 litres of water per day, the water must be safe and affordable, its cost should not exceed 3% of household income, and the water source should be within 1,000 metres of the home with collection time not exceeding 30 minutes. These are not aspirational figures – they are the minimum thresholds of a rights-based standard.

The Human Rights Council reaffirmed the resolution the same year, clarifying that the right to safe drinking water is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living and is inextricably related to the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. In 2015, the UN General Assembly went further, recognizing the right to sanitation as a distinct and separate right, not just an extension of water rights.

Key features of the international framework 🔗

The five normative elements 🔗

Under the international framework, the right to water carries five core attributes. Water must be available in sufficient quantities for personal and domestic use. It must be safe – free from microorganisms, chemical substances, and radiological hazards. It must be acceptable in colour, odour, and taste. It must be physically accessible, meaning water facilities must be reachable for all sections of the population. And it must be affordable, so that payment for water services does not compromise the ability to pay for other basic needs. These five elements, drawn from General Comment 15 and the 2010 resolution, form the minimum content of the right that states are obligated to fulfil.

State obligations under international law 🔗

The framework places three layers of obligation on states: the duty to respect the right (not to interfere with existing access), the duty to protect it (preventing third parties like corporations from compromising water access), and the duty to fulfil it (actively providing water services, especially to the most marginalized). International law makes clear that even when a government delegates water service delivery to a private operator, the state cannot use this as a shield against its human rights obligations. The state remains the primary duty-bearer.

Critically, the framework demands a pro-poor focus. States must direct interventions toward those most in need and address all forms of discrimination – whether based on caste, gender, ethnicity, disability, or economic status – that impede water access. UN-Water notes that less than one-third of countries surveyed report high levels of community participation in water decision-making, a significant gap in rights-based implementation globally.

Water, sanitation, and the SDGs 🔗

Sustainable Development Goal 6, adopted in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda, operationalizes the right to water as a global development target. SDG 6.1 calls for universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water, while SDG 6.2 focuses on adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene. These targets are not merely aspirational – they are measurable commitments to which all member states, including India, are accountable.

India’s legal position on the right to water 🔗

India’s Constitution does not explicitly mention the right to water among the fundamental rights guaranteed in Part III. However, through decades of judicial interpretation, Indian courts have firmly established that water access is an integral component of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

Judicial development of the right 🔗

The trajectory begins with Subhash Kumar v. State of Bihar (1991), where the Supreme Court held that the right to life under Article 21 includes the right to enjoy pollution-free water and air. This was followed by the landmark Narmada Bachao Andolan v. Union of India (2000), where the Court observed that water is the basic need for human survival and is part of the right to life. The most explicit judicial statement came in A.P. Pollution Control Board II v. Prof. M.V. Nayudu (2001), where the Supreme Court held that “the right to access to drinking water is fundamental to life and there is a duty on the State under Article 21 to provide clean drinking water to its citizens.” Significantly, the Court in that case also referenced India’s participation in the UN Water Conference to underscore the state’s obligations.

Indian courts have also relied on the public trust doctrine, holding that the state is the trustee of all natural resources including water, which must be protected for public use and enjoyment. In M.C. Mehta v. Kamal Nath, the Supreme Court declared that the State, as trustee of natural resources, is under a legal duty to protect them – resources that exist for public benefit cannot be converted to private use arbitrarily.

Article 47 and the directive principles 🔗

Beyond Article 21, Article 47 of the Constitution places a duty on the state to raise the level of nutrition and the standard of living, and to improve public health. Courts have read this directive principle in conjunction with Article 21 to affirm the state’s positive obligation to provide safe drinking water, especially for agricultural and irrigation purposes. While directive principles are not directly enforceable in court, they provide a constitutional mandate that guides legislative and executive action on water governance.

Aligning India’s national policy with international commitments 🔗

India has taken significant steps to translate both its constitutional obligations and international commitments into policy. The flagship Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), launched in 2019, aims to provide every rural household with a Functional Household Tap Connection (FHTC) delivering 55 litres of safe water per person per day – aligning directly with the minimum quantity standard under international human rights law. Coverage has grown from roughly 17% of rural households in 2019 to over 80% by early 2025, representing one of the largest water infrastructure drives in the world.

At the 2023 UN Water Conference, India stated its commitment to SDG 6.1 and announced investments of over $240 billion in the water sector through government resources and public-private partnerships. The creation of the Ministry of Jal Shakti in 2019 – a unified ministry consolidating water governance functions – reflects a policy recognition that fragmented administration was itself a barrier to rights fulfilment.

Yet significant gaps remain. Groundwater depletion, industrial water pollution, regional disparities, and inconsistent water quality monitoring continue to undermine the effective realization of the right. Communities facing caste-based discrimination in water access, Adivasi groups, and urban slum residents remain disproportionately excluded. India’s national regulatory frameworks are still largely dissociated from the international human rights framework – meaning that while policy programmes exist, they are not always structured around the language of enforceable rights, accountability, and non-discrimination that international law requires.

The gap between recognition and realization 🔗

One of the most important lessons from the international framework is that legal recognition – however significant – does not automatically translate into access. Fifteen years after Resolution 64/292, one in three people globally still lack access to safe drinking water. The Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation has consistently flagged the failure to incorporate a human rights-based approach in development cooperation – where programmes focus on infrastructure outputs rather than on rights, participation, and accountability.

For India, this gap is particularly visible in rural governance. Local bodies – Gram Panchayats and Village Water and Sanitation Committees – are formally empowered under constitutional provisions and the JJM framework to manage water systems. But capacity deficits, funding gaps, and low community participation in decision-making mean that the rights-based ideals of availability, accessibility, and affordability are unevenly achieved. Bridging this gap requires not just building pipes and connections, but embedding the accountability structures that international human rights law demands – so that every citizen, regardless of location, caste, or gender, can claim their right to water and hold the state answerable when it fails.

What do you think? India’s judiciary has been proactive in reading the right to water into Article 21 – but should this right be explicitly codified in the Constitution rather than left to judicial interpretation? And given that India has made international commitments under SDG 6 and the 2010 UN resolution, how should accountability mechanisms be strengthened so that marginalized communities in rural India can actually enforce this right on the ground?

References

1. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/14/3/398
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_right_to_water_and_sanitation
3. https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2020/07/10th-anniversary-recognition-water-and-sanitation-human-right
4. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/water
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8. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/water/why-human-rights-based-approach-water-and-sanitation-essential-poor
9. https://lawfullegal.in/right-to-water-as-a-fundamental-right-under-article-21-gaps-in-implementation-and-policy/
10. https://lawctopus.com/academike/right-to-clean-water/
11. https://www.ielrc.org/activities/workshop_0612/content/d0607.pdf
12. https://www.indiawaterportal.org/drinking-water/how-india-is-working-to-ensure-safe-drinking-water-for-every-household
13. https://www.aninews.in/news/world/us/india-implementing-two-flagship-missions-to-ensure-universal-access-to-sanitation-drinking-water-gajendra-shekhawat-at-un20230323235103/
14. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772655X25000266