This website, launched on Human Rights Day 2003, has been established by WaterAid and Rights and Humanity, in cooperation with FAN, as part of our contribution to the International Year of Freshwater 2003.

Its aims are to:

• Provide information on relevant policy commitments and explain the concepts and theories of human rights law with respect to the right to water.
• Disseminate General Comment No 15 adopted by the UN Committee on Economic, Socialand Cultural Rights confirming and interpreting the right to water.
• Promote the use of the right to water as a tool for community empowerment, advocacy and legal redress.

In this new century, water, its sanitation, and its equitable distribution, pose great social challenges for our world. We need to safeguard the global supply of healthy water and to ensure that everyone has access to it.

- Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General