23 March 2023 3:00PM-4:30PM In Person The Church Center of the United Nations 777 UN Plaza (corner 1st Ave and 44th St), New York, New York 10017, US
Hearing the Unheard: the Human Right to Water and Sanitation
Despite an explicitly inclusive vision, the travel costs, visa requirements, accreditation criteria and protocols of UN Water 2023 exclude grassroots groups. The UN system is premised on the assumption that Member States act in the interests of and represent their constituents, but: Marginalised/ grassroots groups are “left behind” the Water Action...
None of the above
  • Public

Despite an explicitly inclusive vision, the travel costs, visa requirements, accreditation criteria and protocols of UN Water 2023 exclude grassroots groups. The UN system is premised on the assumption that Member States act in the interests of and represent their constituents, but:

  • Marginalised/ grassroots groups are “left behind” the Water Action Agenda and often excluded from formal participation and accountability processes, and from global decision-making processes and engagements. This is structural and structural interventions are needed to change it if we really want to reach the most left behind.
  • In increasingly repressive contexts, Member States seldom speak on behalf of grassroots groups without the necessary documentation, resources, or capacity to engage or who oppose State or State-sanctioned private actions or actors. Even where they are engaged, marginalised groups seldom have the resources or capacity the engage in public consultation processes, which are often opaque, technical, and not in their home language

We aim to bring the voices of grassroots groups (their lived experience; their agency, and their demands to the United Nations) to UN Water 2023 in a side event, in the interactive dialogues, in general assemblies and through #HearingTheUnheardHRWS and #JusticeBeginsHere digital campaigns. We will partner with Member States who are committed to expanding civic space, OHCHR and the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, and local government representatives.

The “Hearing the Unheard” side event will foreground representatives from marginalised groups, who do not have the ECOSOC status or special accreditation to participate in person in New York. We have gathered (and will continue to gather and edit) video material from groups including informal settlement leadership, pastoralist farmers, dispersed rural communities, indigenous groups, rural and peri-urban women, pit emptiers (small scale private sector actors), informal traders and workers, and LGBTQI groups speaking to each of the questions set out above.

Objectives

  • To create a space in UN Water 2023 for groups unheard in local, regional, and global processes and systems in order to amplify their lived experience, agency and demands of the UN and their Members States.
  • To foster dialogue between State and non-State actors.
  • To identify new and emerging issues and key messages to influence the development of UN-Water advocacy strategies, focusing on women, girls, and key excluded groups, using a bottom-up approach, engaging rights-holders in message definition, and bringing up action-oriented insights from the ground.
  • To disseminate inputs in #HearingTheUnheardHRWS digital campaign which aims to:
    • Generate dialogues and conversations across sectors and actors
    • Gather key messages, experiences, and recommendations from marginalised groups
    • Strengthen awareness across a wide audience and target new audiences, of the water and sanitation challenges – legal, institutional and policy- that marginalised groups face to support advocacy
    • Influence governments and other actors to adopt concrete measures to achieve human rights principles and standards and to inform recommendations to CESR, CEDAW, CMW and CRPD.

Partners

End Water Poverty, Water Integrity Network, OHCHR, UNSR, ICLEI, UCLG, ESCR-Net, Franciscans International, ONGAWA, Simavi, WWI, WU, ANEW, Coalition Eau, WYN, FanMex, UYPETDL, RWSN, KEWASNET, Redes del Agua, with member state support from Liberia and South Africa.

Agenda

The event will include interventions from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights to water and sanitation, grassroot speaker testimonies, video testimonies, responses from local and national government representatives, a response from the UN Special Rapporteur to the human rights to water and sanitation, as well as a reflection and framing discussion between all panellists, led by End Water Poverty.