End Water Poverty

End Water Poverty (EWP) is a global civil society coalition that campaigns for governments to respect, protect and fulfill people’s human rights to safe water and sanitation. EWP is composed of more than 150 CSO partners in 90 countries, who activate and mobilize for their rights to water and sanitation.  EWP partners campaign nationally, regionally and globally for this right to be recognised in law, and to be practiced. EWP works to strengthen partners, allies, and movements so that their collective work ensures that governments, regulators and services providers respect and advance human rights standards and principles. It seeks to contribute to evidence to influence decision-makers in governments and external support agencies towards effective laws, regulation, and norms to meet human rights principles and standards.

Currently EWP is running the Claim Your Water Rights Campaign, which it launched on 10 December 2019. It is a global public pressure campaign that aims to mobilize people to demand their rights to water and sanitation from governments. The breadth of the campaign allows members to advocate on a range of issues - whether it’s affordability, disconnections, sanitation workers’ rights, climate justice or privatization. EWP provides small grants to grassroots civil society to strengthen local action. EWP's members’ campaign tactics have been diverse: from mobilizing communities or airing radio shows to inform people of their rights to lobbying government officials, conducting research, organizing protests and litigation. The campaign has been successful in several areas, including achieving legislative change in Pakistan and Nigeria to influencing governments’ Covid-19 interventions and supporting numerous communities to successfully claim their rights. Their most recent success came in Nigeria with the passing into law of the Enugu Water Bill. The bill stipulates that people have a right to water and that this right is to be enforced by an independent regulator. This came after months of lobbying by the WASH Rights Network.