On November 21, 2013 the UN General Assembly’s Third Committee (The Committee) adopted a resolution on “The human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.” There, all UN member states agreed that the rights to water and sanitation are derived from the right to an adequate standard of living. As a result, these rights are now implicitly recognized as being part of International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

That meant that for the very first time, all UN member States affirmed that the rights to water and sanitation were legally binding in international law.  The U.S. was the only country to disagree with the resolution.