“A human right”: deputies want to include access to water in the Constitution

Parliamentarians presented a transpartisan bill on Wednesday to include the right to water in the environmental charter and thus enshrine it as a fundamental right in the Constitution.

The text includes a single article, worded as follows: “The right to drinking water and sanitation is a human right, essential for the full enjoyment of life and the exercise of all human rights.”

The explanatory memorandum of this draft constitutional law emphasizes that “178 States from all regions of the world have already recognized the right to water and sanitation in international declarations or resolutions.”

Furthermore, “several States have already recognized the right to water in their Constitution: Bolivia, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Slovenia, Ethiopia, Niger, Colombia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uruguay, Kenya, Ecuador, etc.,” the text adds. .

This proposal aims to “establish the right to water as a fundamental right recognized as such by the Constitution,” the explanatory statement states.

Half a million people “do not have access to drinking water”

“It is no longer acceptable that in France 490,300 people do not have access to safely managed drinking water and 882,000 people have only limited access to sanitary facilities,” declared MP Gabriel Amard (LFI-NFP) during the presentation of the bill .

He also mentioned Guadeloupe, “where the bill is double that of France, while the poverty rate” is “double”, Guyana, where “between 15% and 20% of the population does not have access to water” , or even Réunion, where “one in every two inhabitants” cannot drink tap water because “it is not suitable for consumption.”

The promoters of the text hope that it will be examined before World Water Day, which will be celebrated on March 22, 2025. All groups have been invited to join this transpartisan text, with the exception of the National Rally.

“We know the positions of the RN, so there is no doubt that this is not a priority issue for this party,” declared Upper Rhine deputy Hubert Ott (Modem).

“When we are guided by a single, utilitarian and non-humanistic logic, that cannot match the approach we have today, which is transpartisan, but still has the limits of ethics that have been set for us,” he added. “It has nothing to do with parties, it has to do with a conception we have of the world and people.”