Government commitments to ensuring access to water for all

This section highlights some of the policy issues surrounding inequities in access to water and deals specifically with the issues of poverty and women.

It also provides an overview of the evolution of political commitments concerning water, starting with the UN Conference on Human Environment, Stockholm 1972, through to the Millennium Development Goals, adopted in 2000, and the findings of the 2006 UN Human Development Report, which focused on water. It also investigates the effects that recognising the right to water has had on the strategies and financial commitments of donor governments who supply overseas development assistance.

It ends by considering the impact of the policy commitments made at international conferences on the lives of people without adequate access to water.