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21:18 GMT
GENEVA, Sept 15 (KUNA) -- Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, special rapporteur on the human rights council to safe drinking water and sanitation, has listed three factors that aggravated, deepened and amplified this global crisis: the commodification and financialization of water, climate change, and, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.
This came on Wednesday in a report submitted by Arrojo-Agudo before the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council which started an interactive dialogue with the rapporteur.
Arrojo-Agudo said that in the context of the global water crisis, 2.2 billion people were without guaranteed access to safe drinking water and 4.2 billion were without basic sanitation.
He presented his first report on his plan and vision for the mandate from 2020 to 2023, in which he had characterised the problems and challenges faced in the context of the global water crisis with 2.2 billion people without guaranteed access to safe drinking water and 4.2 billion without basic sanitation.
This global water crisis was generating a growing wave of socio-environmental conflicts around the world led by those who directly suffered the crisis in their territories; but also conflicts that were sometimes used and manipulated to justify wars between peoples and nations.
He said that the fundamental causes of the global water crisis lay at the confluence of two major structural flaws of the current development model: the unsustainability of aquatic ecosystems, caused by humans, which made water go from being the key to life to being a terrible vector of disease and death; and poverty, inequality and discrimination arising from the prevailing socio-economic order.
He affirmed that working on these goals represents the key to ensuring human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, mainly the poorest groups, while promoting water as a key for cooperation and peace regionally and internationally. (end)
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