Human Rights to Water in North Africa and the Middle East: What is New and What is Not; What is Important and What is Not

Abstract

Given the long history and the multiple interpretations of water rights in the Middle East and North Africa, it is difficult to say anything new without being provocative. The danger is that, in the effort to be provocative, it is easy to become frivolous. Fortunately, it is not possible to deal with any aspect of water, and certainly not human rights to water, without at least passing attention to hydrology and geography, and to economics and political science. Although none of these disciplines gives exact answers, taken together they do impose boundaries to any commentary. Even so, the comments below are tentative. They should be taken in the context of a ‘think piece’, designed to stimulate thinking rather than to provide final answers.

Acknowledgements

This work was sponsored by the Minister of Water and Irrigation, Government of Egypt, the International Development Research Centre, and the Third World Centre for Water Management. Acknowledgment is due to the stimulating peer review provided by other participants at the IDRC Workshop on Water as a Human Right in MENA (Cairo, Egypt; 11–12 February 2006). In addition, several colleagues in Canada commented on an earlier version of the paper: Professor Karen Bakker, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; Professor Heather Eaton, St. Paul University, Ottawa; Ms Susan Howatt, Council of Canadians; Ms. Linda Nowlan, Environmental Law and Policy Consultant, Vancouver; Professor Stuart Schoenfeld, York University, Toronto; Ms. Joy Woolfrey, Gender and Health Services Consultant, Halifax. Finally, credit is due to an anonymous referee of a draft version of the final paper.

Notes

1. Credit is due to Professor Stuart Schoenfeld of Glendon College, York University, for this observation.

2. Credit is due to Professor Karen Bakker, University of British Columbia, for this distinction. She has a forthcoming paper in Antipodes on the issue.

3. The former figure appears in the Constitution of South Africa; the latter is proposed in an article by Gleick (2000); others have suggested 100 litres per person-day, but that figure is only applicable in regions where it is not likely necessary to assert a right for water. In any event, none of these numbers is based on extensive research.

4. The differences between cost and value as a means of determining price are important but too complex to go into in this paper.

5. An anonymous reviewer deserves credit for suggesting this line of research.