Water for People : The human rights to water and sanitation, including for those in vulnerable situations, for healthy societies and economies
Co-chairs : Ghana and Switzerland
Interactive Dialogue A of the 2026 United Nations Water Conference addresses the human rights to water and sanitation, including for those in vulnerable situations, as a precondition for healthy and prosperous societies and economies. As of 2024, 2.1 billion people still lack safely managed drinking water. Declining official development assistance, accelerating climate change, and fragility and conflict are straining WASH systems worldwide and deepening pre-existing inequalities across income, geography and gender. These intersecting inequalities disproportionately affect women and girls, who hold the primary responsibility of fetching water in seven of ten households lacking water on premises. The dialogue therefore calls for high-level political leadership to hold duty bearers accountable for the fulfillment of the human rights to water and sanitation, and urges the systematic embedding of human rights across WASH governance and financing. Advancing these solutions is essential to closing the WASH equity gap and achieving universal, rights-based access to water and sanitation by 2030.
