Statement from Loïc Fauchon, President of the World Water Council

An important milestone on the long road to access to water for all

The UN General Assembly has declared water and sanitation as a human right.


Personally, I welcome the vote of this resolution. It represents a significative step forward towards the right of each citizen of the world to have access to quality water.

For almost ten years, our Council has been campaigning in favour of the right to water as an essential element of human dignity. This right is an essential brick in the wall we want to build against ignorance, injustice, poverty, and thirst.

Without doubt, one should not limit to expressing the right. Obviously we have to clarify everyone’s obligations, starting with the States, but also those of the local communities, and all those in charge of water competence.

This is the next step. This is all the things our Council has been asking for - “drinking water before cell phones”, “taps before guns” - , in the previous World Water Fora in Kyoto in 2003, in Mexico-City in 2006, and in Istanbul in 2009.

Every child, every woman, every man on earth is entitled to water and sanitation. This is the right to water. Our duty is to say when, how, where, and how. Our duty is to implement practical measures. This is the job France, Marseille and the World Water Council have taken on in order to make this Forum, in Marseille, in 2012, the “Forum of solutions”.

Let us etch the right to water in the Constitutions, define minimal water allocations for the most deprived persons, impose the compulsory creation of water supply points and of sanitary facilities in each school, everywhere in the world. It is through hundreds, and thousands of solutions for water, that the right to water will become reality.