FAN’s Advocacy Action and Learning Officer, Kolleen Bouchane represented FAN at a public consultation on the human rights obligations related to sanitation on 29 April 2009.
At its September 2008 session, the Human Rights Council appointed Caterina de Albuquerque the Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, for a period of three years. Ms de Albuquerque took up the role on 1 November 2008.
In her first report to the Human Rights Council in March 2009, Ms de Albuquerque noted that “[a]lthough lack of access to sanitation is at the origin of the non-realization of basic human rights, the area of sanitation has not been adequately analysed from a human rights perspective.”
To address this gap and to carry out a key part of her mandate to undertake a "study... on the further clarification of the content of human rights obligations, including non-discrimination obligations, in relation to access to safe drinking water and sanitation," Ms de Albuquerque has decided to focus her first year of work specifically on sanitation.
On April 29 she organized a consultation on human rights obligations and access to sanitation in Geneva, Switzerland. The representatives of more than forty countries and several civil society organizations attended the consultation.
Read Kolleen's impressions of the event