Medical waste, bad for your health and bad for your rights, warns UN expert

A new UN report says the international community has to date paid little attention to the growing problem of medical waste around the world, especially in developing countries. The report was released in September 2011 by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and toxic waste Calin Georgescu.

“Some 20 to 25 per cent of the total waste generated by health-care establishments is regarded as hazardous and may create a variety of health and environmental risks if not managed and disposed of in an appropriate manner,” warns the independent expert designated by the UN Human Rights Council to report on the adverse effects of the movement and dumping of toxic and dangerous products and wastes on the enjoyment of human rights.

Hazardous health-care waste includes infectious waste, sharps, anatomical and pathological waste, obsolete or expired chemical products and pharmaceuticals, and radioactive materials. Medical waste is often mixed with general household waste, and either disposed of in municipal waste facilities or dumped illegally.

A significant amount of chemicals and pharmaceuticals is disposed of through hospital wastewater.

In countries where no wastewater treatment facilities exist, effluents from health-care facilities are discharged directly in rivers and other water streams, and risk contaminating surface and groundwater resources used for drinking and domestic purposes. [...] Because they are designed to have a biological effect, pharmaceuticals can also have a significant adverse impact on fish and seafood used for human consumption.

In his report, Mr. Georgescu makes a number of specific recommendations, including raising awareness of the human and environmental risks of hazardous medical waste, the development of a comprehensive international legal framework for medical waste management, and the replacing incineration of medical waste by more environmentally-friendly and safe methods of disposal, such as autoclaving.

Read the full report

Related web site: WHO – Healthcare waste management (HCWM) – www.healthcarewaste.org

Source: OHCHR, 14 Sep 2011

UN Human Rights Council affirms that right to water and sanitation is legally binding

The UN Human Rights Council has finally recognised the right to water and sanitation as legally binding in international law, in a landmark decision adopted on 30 September 2010.

[T]he UN affirmed [...] by consensus that the right to water and sanitation is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living, which is contained in several international human rights treaties. While experts working with the UN human rights system have long acknowledged this, it was the first time that the Human Rights Council has declared itself on the issue.

According to the UN Independent Expert on human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, “this means that for the UN, the right to water and sanitation, is contained in existing human rights treaties and is therefore legally binding”. She added that “this landmark decision has the potential to change the lives of the billions of human beings who still lack access to water and sanitation.”

Human rights: obligations related to private and other non-state service provision in water and sanitation

The human rights framework does not express a preference for public or private models for the provision of water and sanitation services, as long as the human rights to water and sanitation are guaranteed. This is one of the main conclusions of the latest report [1] by the UN Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation, Ms. Catarina de Albuquerque. She calls for a more nuanced, less ideological and emotional, debate that acknowledges that wide variety of actors and arrangements, which are rarely exclusively public or private, in service delivery.

Ms De Albuquerque has a three-year mandate (2008-2011) to provide recommendations on the right to water and sanitation to the UN Human Rights Council. Each year she focuses on one or more specific issues. For 2010 Ms De Albuquerque chose the contentious issue of private sector participation in the provision of water and sanitation services.

Rights to food and water are also human rights, says Dutch development minister

Bert Koenders. Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs

During his opening address at the Seminar on Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals, [Dutch] development minister Bert Koenders said that the refugees in Sri Lanka and Pakistan have the right to food, drink [that might not go down so well in Pakistan, presumably what is meant is water], and shelter. He said that these social and economic rights are also human rights, and that the governments responsible must ensure that they are not violated. He would hold them accountable for that.

His words were supported by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms Navanethem Pillay. She stressed the importance of human rights in achieving the MDGs and called for the deployment of legal instruments to this end.

‘Without human rights there will be no MDGs,’ said Koenders.

[...] Mr Koenders organised this seminar because human rights and development cooperation are inextricably linked.

Source: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 26 May 2009

Quotes from his speech:

“Development organisations – like my own – should seek to build people’s capabilities to do so [be active subjects of their own development], by guaranteeing their rights to the essentials of a decent life: education, health care, water and sanitation, protection against violence, including domestic violence”.

” [I]n March 2008 the Netherlands recognised the right to drinking water and sanitation as a human right. This is a significant step forward in efforts to achieve the seventh Millennium Development Goal. It gives NGOs and lobbying organisations real leverage to persuade governments to do more for the most vulnerable in society”.

[...] we are now looking to see whether our bilateral development pilot projects can be implemented under that right [the right to water]. In this seminar, we want to explore ways of fleshing out initiatives like these. Because sectoral water policies can only work when they empower users and give them rights.

Read the full speech here

UN Human Rights Council delays decision on right to water

“Once again, the UN Human Rights Council missed a critical opportunity to recognize the human right to water. Instead, as a result of lobbying by the United States and Canada, it passed a watered–down resolution protecting a corporation’s right to sell water”, said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of the US-based Food & Water Watch, in a statement released on 27 March 2008.

Canada’s resistance to recognising water as an international human right is based on the fear that it would lose sovereignty over its own water. “People could argue, ‘Well, you’ve agreed water is a human right, we here down in Atlanta have no water, there’s a drought,’ or in California or whatever. You have a moral obligation to be consistent with your word and let us take some water down here, by one means or another”, explained Canadian MP Francis Scarpaleggia in the Toronto Star.

The right to water was on the agenda at the 7th session of the Human Rights Council (Geneva, 3 – 28 March 2008). During the opening session on 3 March 2008, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Verhagen, announced that the Netherlands is to recognise the right to water as a human right.

“By far the major lightening rod of the resolution was the terminological description of the mandate, in the title of the resolution and elsewhere”, writes Claude Cahn, Head of Advocacy Unit, Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE). “Any mention of a ‘right to water and sanitation’ was deleted, under the influence of withering objections by several governments that no such rights exist, and replaced with ‘Human Rights and access to safe drinking water and sanitation’ “. “The perceived need to adopt the resolution by consensus dictated that the adopted measure was significantly weaker than it might otherwise have been, particularly in the area of the normative description of the rights at issue”, Cahn added.

In the Resolution on Human Rights and Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation (A/HRC/7/L.16), the Council decided to “appoint, for a period of three years, an Independent Expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation”. The expert’s task will be to undertake a study on best practices and human rights obligations related to water and sanitation, and submit a final report to the Council at its tenth session.

Read more: UN Human Rights Council, 28 Mar 2008