Hearing The Unheard: Human Rights to Water and Sanitation

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Hearing The Unheard: Human Rights to Water and Sanitation

Date: 

March 23, 2023

Time: 

15:00 – 16:30  EST (Please find your timezone here)

Location: Church Centre, 777 UN Plaza,New York (corner of 1st Avenue and 44th Street) 

*Only two in person participants per organization can be accommodated in the venue which has a maximum capacity of 30 people.

Online: (Zoom Link here)

Registration: https://tinyurl.com/4st83v6d

Description:

On 23 March 2023, End Water Poverty, the Water Integrity Network, and partners, are hosting an official side event to the UN 2023 Water Conference, called Hearing the Unheard: Human Rights to Water and Sanitation, which will amplify the voices of marginalized, grassroots groups.

The side event and its digital campaign, #HearingTheUnheardHRWS, will share video and live testimony of the experiences, agency and demands of marginalized groups from across the globe, and include responses from the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to water and sanitation Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR)’s Rio Hada, the Director-General of the South African Department of Water and Sanitation Sean Phillips and a local government representative from Latin-America. The side event follows on from a “listening exercise” held at Stockholm Water Week in August 2022, which facilitated a dialogue between the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to water and sanitation, the OHCHR and marginalized groups from four countries who spoke to three questions:

• How does a lack of safe, adequate, affordable, acceptable, available water and sanitation affect your community?
• What actions have you taken to address this and what responses have your received from government?
• What support and action do you want to see from the UN and the international community

The side event, submitted by South Africa and Liberia, will foreground representatives from marginalized groups who do not have the ECOSCO status, special accreditation, or the opportunity to participate in the UN Water Conference in person in New York. Through a combination of two live testimonies from grassroots representatives and a collection of video material from a wide array of groups, including informal settlement dwellers, pastoralist farmers, indigenous groups, rural communities, young people, sanitation workers, informal workers among others.

The event will amplify marginalized voices in the Conference and the digital campaign will amplify marginalized voices and responses and commitments from national and local government and the UN.

More information: https://endwaterpoverty.org/un-2023-water-conference-side-event-hearing-the-unheard-to-amplify-marginalised-voices/