Hannibal Ignacio Faccendini*
Approximately 7 million people in Argentina do not have full and safe access to water, an essential human right enshrined in the National Constitution.
Drinking water, integral and safe, requires social and environmental equity. Fundamentally, water does not reach impoverished and precarious people. The United Nations celebrates every February 20 as the Day of Social Justice and therefore environmental. For inclusive environmentalism, the environment is a whole that does not totalize, but is comprehensive and integrative. Thus, flora, fauna, water, land, air, climate, inert elements, the atmosphere and all humanity, are part of biocentrism, the central axis of inclusive environmentalism. Therefore, what happens to one of the biological species such as humans, is also part of the interest of inclusive environmentalism, because life is the integral centrality.
Humanity is injured when water is priced and marketed, because it is a human right. For example, the commercialization of December 7, 2020, when water began to be quoted on the Wall Street stock market as a commodity at $486 per 1,233 m3 or the periodic rate increases that are made to the vital element, these situations are of environmental damage.
In Argentina, access to water and sanitation is an essential human right, Articles 41 and 75 paragraph 22 of the National Constitution support said substantiveness. United Nations Resolution 64/292, ratified by Argentina, as well as the Human Right to the Toilet, of July 24, 2013, which establishes November 19 as World Toilet Day, and also article 11 of the Pact of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights marks the path that water and sanitation are indisputable human rights.
Law 13,935 on the Right to Water Jugs, which motivated and generated the direction of the Water Chair of the National University of Rosario, supports the human right to water. Cities such as Bariloche, Gualeguaychú, Córdoba, Rosario, Santa Fe, Sunchales and other country cities have replicated the Human Right to Jugs of Water established in Rosario and derived from the human right to water and sanitation. Likewise, Argentine jurisprudence has established that access to water is a human right.
Approximately 7 million people in Argentina do not have full and safe access to water. It would be necessary to partially add those who are exposed to chronic hydroarcenism endemic region (Hacre), that is, they are those exposed to more than 10 mg of arsenic per liter per person according to the scientific parameters of the World Health Organization. Worldwide, 2,100 million do not have access to drinking, integral and safe water and 4,200 million do not have access to sanitation. 2 million people continue to die every year because they do not have access to safe and good water. The UN and each of the States on Earth remain in debt to life.
They continue to have a biased and commodified vision of water. The different global objectives of the UN to achieve good water for all people have failed and not only have the homeless and water poor not decreased, but have often increased. The greatest poverty and indigence of water has worsened with the Covid 19 pandemic. We need a global public Pact so that there is water for all people, between the UN and the States of the Earth, Otherwise, the poor and indigent of water will continue to grow and it will be very difficult to solve or at least reduce the damage they suffer.
The outlook is not very optimistic, but we have to continue fighting for the human right to water for all people on Earth. Insist, insist until the wall of indifference opens and the pain of others is our pain. And, that we can eradicate alienation.
*PhD in Legal and Social Sciences, Master’s in Environment and Sustainable Development, director of the Water Chair and the Interdisciplinary Water Center of the National University of Rosario.
