The Right to drinking water was recognized by the United Nations General Assembly, July 28, 2010 , with the support of France. It is a fundamental right, essential to the full exercise of the right to life and all human rights.
Now, it is clear that in the overseas territories everyone does not have access to quality drinking water. This is particularly the case with informal housing districts, in Mayotte and in Guyana, where many inhabitants consume uncontrolled and unsanitary river waters, or share an access point for many families.
This is also the case of isolated populations of the Amazon forest, or disadvantaged districts of Reunion and French Polynesia, which do not have running water. This is also the case of the inhabitants of Guadeloupe who have been undergoing daily water cuts for years which deprive them of an essential resource. 2> 460,000 people concerned in France
In all these territories, statistics are alarming. In Guadeloupe, unexpected cuts make a quarter of the population has no water every day. In Guyana, 15 % of the population does not have access to a drinking water network. In Mayotte, where the situation is the most critical, a third of the inhabitants do not have running water and 50 % in the informal housing areas.
In his Parliamentary report of February 2021 [in the name of the commission of inquiry relating to the stranglehold on the water resource by private interests and its consequences], the deputy Olivier Serva (freedoms, independents, overseas and territories) has pointed to serious dysfunctions of the local public service of water overseas. It is therefore high time to act for an effective right, for all and everywhere in the territory of the Republic.
The Directive 2020/2184 [from the European Parliament] relating to the quality of water intended for human consumption introduces new ambitions. Its objectives concern both people with problems of access to water, not connected, in informal housing, as well as vulnerable and marginalized groups. The State estimates the persons concerned in France at 460,000. For the Social and Environmental Economic Council, its transposition constitutes an important advance which must allow the implementation of concrete and adapted solutions, including overseas.
We have to go further. For our assembly, a right to “opposable” water, legally binding for the State and local authorities, would be decisive progress and the means of responding to certain legal dead ends. Many law proposals have already been made in this direction.
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