NGO Mining Working Group
The Post-2015 Development Agenda aims to be transformative and groundbreaking. However it is impossible
for the Agenda to “take the bold and transformative steps needed to shift the world on to a
sustainable path” (Zero Draft preamble), if the narrative and design fail to acknowledge and address
the root causes of systemic problems.
The Zero Draft makes an important stocktaking assessment of our world today: rising inequalities within
and among nations; enormous disparities, of opportunity, wealth and power; growing unemploy-
-
ronmental degradation, and climate change (para. 12). Yet the narrative and orientation willfully ignore
the role that neoliberal development policies - and especially the extractive development model - have
played in creating and exacerbating these problems.
As a global community we must acknowledge that much of the violence, inequality, and poverty that
two years of post-2015 civil society consultations have entered into evidence this development-based
violence and marginalization and especially its devastating and disproportionate impact on women,
indigenous peoples, and peasant communities.
To be coherent with the objectives of sustainable development, we must guarantee that the Agenda
rights-holders, and that its proposed solutions are sustainable.1
The text accompanying the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a reference point for the
orientation and objectives. The NGO Mining Working Group presents these proposed amendments and
1. Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda in human rights
2. Make poverty eradication the objective over economic growth and prosperity
3. Explicitly name and include the human right to water and sanitation in priority themes
4. Safeguard essential public services from public private partnerships (PPPs)
1 Mining Working Group, Advocacy Brief, “A Rights-Based Approach to Resource Extraction in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development” (May 2015), available
at http://miningwg.com/resources-2/mwg-advocacy-brief/.
NGO Mining Working Group
Response to Zero Draft of the Outcome Document for the
United Nations Summit to Adopt the Post-2015 Development
Agenda
Transforming our World by 2030: A New Agenda for Global Action
2
1 Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda
in Human Rights
Civil society and UN Special Procedures have been unequivocal
in calling on States to anchor the Post-2015
Development Agenda in human rights principles and
the existing human rights framework. Yet far from being
rooted in a robust human rights framework, the Zero
Draft represents a notable regression in terms of recognizing
human rights compared to the Rio+20 outcome
document and the Millennium Declaration.
The marginalization of human rights in the Zero Draft
-
standing of human rights that has dominated much of
the Intergovernmental Negotiations to date. As civil
society has repeatedly argued and shown, not only is
a rights-based agenda ethically and legally mandated,
a rights-based approach is also pragmatic in terms of,
inter alia: reaching the objectives of promoting equality
and non-discrimination; ensuring participation by all
rights-holders; taking advantage of existing resources,
knowledge, and platforms; evaluating policy results;
and increasing accountability.
It is worth clarifying that rights-based accountability
serves both a corrective function of addressing wrongdoing
and also a pragmatic and preventative function:
“helping to determine which aspects of policy or service
delivery are working, so they can be built on, and which
aspects need to be adjusted. Accountability principles
and mechanisms can improve policymaking by identifying
systemic failures that need to be overcome in order
-
sponsive.”1
A further limitation evident in the conception of human
rights in the Zero Draft is a focus only on States’ negative
obligations to respect human rights, to refrain from
interfering with or curtailing human rights. Unlike previous
UN development documents2 , there is no acknowledgment
in the text of the State obligations to protect
the human rights of individuals and groups from abuses
by third parties including transnational corporations un-
rights or take positive action to guarantee the enjoyment
of basic human rights.
1 OHCHR, Who will be accountable, p. ix
2 Millennium Declaration, Rio+20 outcome document
Agenda is “guided” by human rights principles while
the document fails to explicitly name the international
human rights framework and outline strategies to realize
human rights commitments. The general reference
to “international law” (paras. 11 & 16) instead of human
rights law in the Zero Draft concerns us, given the current
context in which trade and investment protection
laws are promoted at the expense of human rights and
national sovereignty.3 Human rights should be seen as
serving an obligatory and functional role in the achievement
of the SDGs rather than as one of many examples
of outcomes of the SDG goals and targets alongside
fuzzy concepts like “justice and equality” and “shared
prosperity” (para. 15).
Grounding the SDGs in a human rights framework would
ensure stronger accountability by enabling monitoring
and review through existing mechanisms. The human
rights mechanisms, including the Human Rights Council,
the Special Procedures, the Treaty Bodies, and the
Universal Periodic Review, have proven to be important
spaces for evaluating human rights compliance of states
and monitoring human rights abuses by third parties.
Finally, a rights-based approach is the only way to operationalize
the commitment to “leave no one behind.”
Anchoring the Post-2015 framework in human rights
would move the development agenda from a charity-
based approach to a justice approach that clearly
delineates the responsibilities and entitlements of each
actor: people as rights-holders, national governments
-
tiated responsibilities.4
Though far from perfect, the Chapeau of the Open Work-
-
itly name and recognize human rights, and it was negotiated
in a highly inclusive and transparent manner. We
therefore regret to see this important piece of the Post-
2015 package relegated to Annex 3, as an afterthought
rather than an overarching frame for the Post 2015 Development
Agenda. In addition to the proposed textual
amendments below, we recommend that the Chapeau
text be brought into the introduction of the Agenda.
3 See statement by 10 UN experts: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/
DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16031&LangID=E
4 Joint Statement, Human Rights for All Post-2015 (Dec. 10, 2013), available at
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5123joint.statem….
dec10.pdf.
Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda in Human Rights
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
III. Follow-up and Review
Global Level
4
2 Make Poverty Eradication the Objective
over Economic Growth and Prosperity
and prosperity with poverty eradication
and does not address the evidence that the
growing concentration of wealth associated
with growth-based development policies
has in fact contributed to the proliferation
and deepening of poverty. The text fails to
acknowledge the many examples where
policies aimed at economic growth and
prosperity for some few have undermined
development goals for many others, generating
insecurity and aggravating marginalization.
The Agenda must not perpetuate
the faulty premise that economic prosperity
will automatically generate positive human
and ecological development where it is most
needed.
This faulty orientation disregards the repeated
calls for a rights-based approach and
the redistribution of wealth as central strategies
for the eradication of poverty. Setting
out a shared understanding of poverty will
help contribute toward ensuring coherency
in this agenda with its stated objective of
poverty eradication.
For the UN, poverty is the “human condition
characterized by the sustained or chronic
deprivation of the resources, capabilities,
choices, security and power necessary for
the enjoyment of an adequate standard of
living and other civil, cultural, economic, political,
and social rights.”1 Poverty then is not
only characterized by lack of income, but is
multidimensional.
1 Cite CESC, 2001; GP on Extreme Poverty.
Therefore, poverty eradication involves targeting
the root causes of injustice and ensuring
greater access to power and resources
for marginalized groups.
The Zero Draft’s reference to the “tyranny of
poverty” is appropriate in its recognition of
the power relations implicit in inequality and
poverty: it is this concentration of power and
resources at the expense of others’ agency
and rights that must be transformed. This
ought to be the driving orientation of the
agenda.
Instead, we see a global push for economic
growth at all costs. The Post-2015 Development
Agenda features economic growth as
a key and independent objective (preamble)
-
tutes “sustainable and inclusive” economic
growth. Growth is referenced as a means to
achieve the SDGs (para 24) and as an independent
priority of Member States that must
elements within the agenda (para 19).
To free the world from the tyranny of poverty,
we must recognize the structures and
systems that uphold this tyranny over peo-
checks on the power imbalance and structures
that perpetuate the cyclical injustice
of poverty. The Post-2015 package must
prioritize eradicating poverty over economic
growth and prosperity, enabling and creating
space for local and alternative models
of development that are grounded in human
rights and community participation.
Make Poverty Eradication the Objective over Economic Growth and Prosperity
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
6
3 Explicitly Name and Include the Human Right
to Water and Sanitation in Priority Themes
Although environmentalists, decision-makers and
the business sector agree that the deepening global
water crisis is the single largest challenge plaguing
the planet in the 21st century,1 the Zero Draft does
concern, nor its urgency. Goal 62 which combines
freshwater management targets and universal access
to water and sanitation services, is a fairly complex
and far-reaching goal dealing with a range of
urgent social and environmental issues. In addition,
water is a crosscutting theme that is a pre-condi-
health, and the production of food and energy.
Despite this, water is not included in Zero Draft paragraphs
20-28 that cover the major thematic issues
of the 17 SDGs. Brief mentions of water within the
document overlook the importance of the human
right to water and sanitation and fail to cover the
range and complexity of freshwater challenges
from this development agenda. To this end, moving
the Chapeau, which explicitly names the human
right to water to the third annex of the Zero Draft
relegates water from a top priority and shifts focus
away from viewing water as a matter of human
rights.
First and foremost, the human right to water and
sanitation must frame all goals, targets and indicators
dealing with water resource management and
universal access to water and sanitation services. As
noted in a call by 621 organizations from the global
water justice movement,3 explicit recognition of
the human right to water and sanitation is the only
way to safeguard scarce water supplies for the basic
needs of people and the planet against other competing
interests.
1 http://www.weforum.org/news/climate-change-and-water-shortage-mainconce…-
world-economic-forum-east-asia
2 6:Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for
all, Zero Draft,p.13
3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_ogobv2USnNajhoVTFnRnlwam-
FVc3dvNE1BcjY3RlprMU53&authuser=1
drinking water rather than the enjoyment of the human
right to water and sanitation that encompasses
other important principles (including availability,
As seen with the MDGs, emphasis on one aspect
of the normative content of this right leads to inappropriate
solutions that neglect the needs of the
most vulnerable segments of the population.
In addition, the solutions to freshwater scarcity in
-
cient use” and waste management (para 26). Because
of this shortcoming, the document fails to
appreciate the full extent of the current water crisis,
its humanitarian implications, and the obstacles it
will pose to the development agenda. An emphasis
to examine how water resources are distributed
and how water pollution is regulated. An emphasis
an approach that favors the status quo rather than
a willingness to challenge the unsustainable and
unjust manners in which watersheds are being depleted
and destroyed by a powerful few while resources
are denied to marginalized and vulnerable
segments of the population.
As the world water crisis deepens and proliferates, a
hierarchy of water use that prioritizes human rights
is essential to ensuring equitable and environmentally
sustainable use of limited supplies. If the Post-
2015 Development Agenda is to succeed, the text
In addition to amendments to existing paragraphs,
we call for an independent paragraph highlighting
the importance of the freshwater crisis and calling
for all SDG activities pertaining to freshwater
use and distribution to be framed within a human
rights-based approach. We propose the language
be drawn from UNGA Resolution 66/288 The Future
we Want.4
4 UNGA Resolution 66/280 para 121
Explicitly Name and Include the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Priority Themes
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
8
4 Safeguard Essential Public Services from
Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
We emphasize the importance of an agen-
upholding the concern that, “In principle,
States have a legitimate interest in pursuing
channels that open up business interests
for their citizens. But undue deference
to business interests at the expense
of other legitimate interests such as human
rights, is a source of acute concern.”1
In failing to distinguish between stakeholders
and rights-holders, the agenda
remains ambiguous about whose interests
it serves. The framing of multi-stakeholder
processes as an attempt to create
“win-win cooperation”2 is a failure to recognize
the duty of the State to safeguard
the interests of rights-holders against
Post-2015 Development Agenda must
show a greater commitment to protecting
the interests of rights-holders rather than
attempting to facilitate compromises between
rights-holders and third parties.
In addition, the Zero Draft unequivocally
promotes business and private sector participation--
including through the Global
Partnerships framework (para 36)- without
acknowledging any of the risks associated
with this strategy. The call to “scale
up substantially public-private cooperation”
(para 39) is alarming in light of the
1 United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai, A/
HRC/29/25
2 Para 16, Zero Draft
disastrous experiences with privatization,
notably in the areas of water and sanitation,
health care, and education. For this
reason, the Post-2015 Development Agenda
should exclude essential public services
that implicate States’ obligations to
guarantee the human rights to water and
sanitation, education, and health from private
sector partnerships and from private
We are also concerned with the Zero
Draft’s linkage of the SDGs to the trade
agenda (34) despite repeated concerns by
civil society organizations, and recently by
10 UN experts about the adverse impacts
of the trade agenda and investment protection
mechanisms on human rights.3
Furthermore, development aid or loans
aimed at implementing the Post-2015 Development
Agenda must not be tied to
conditionalities forcing privatization or
trade liberalization.
Finally, the Global Partnership for development
within the agenda must be understood
as a partnership between State
actors, as States are accountable for their
human rights obligations (including extra-
territorial) and are accountable to
their citizens.
3 UN experts voice concern over adverse impact of free
trade and investment agreements on human rights at http://
www.ohchr.org/FR/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx-
?NewsID=16031&LangID=E#sthash.rXZJLoCy.dpuf
Safeguard Essential Public Services from Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
10
5
Communities and Civil Society
The experience of poverty is characterized by
lack of capabilities, opportunities, choices, security,
and social power. Lack of power is a universal
characteristic of poverty that manifests
itself in many ways; at its core is the inability
-
1 Therefore, empowerment
and agency are not just tangential or procedural
objectives for the Agenda but rather
required elements of poverty eradication.
To be coherent with the stated commitment to
eradicate and transform the tyranny of poverty,
there must be a manifest commitment to empowering
those that have systematically been
marginalized from the decision-making spaces
If the Post-2015 Development Agenda is to
deliver on people-centered sustainable development,
it must prioritize rights-holders over
stakeholders and correct ambiguous language
in this regard (paras 36, 37 and III 3, 9, 14). In
participation by rights-holders is essential for
development. Thus, the Post-2015 narrative
must challenge existing power relations that
restrict people’s agency and enable free, in-
and outcomes.2 One integral part of this is promoting
and monitoring related rights such as
access to information, freedom of expression
-
tive remedy for harms committed. However,
1 http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.
aspx?NewsID=13407&LangID=E. See also Franciscans International,
Development: Sustainable for whom?, http://franciscansinternational.
-
2 http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.
aspx?NewsID=13407&LangID=E. See also Franciscans International,
Development: Sustainable for whom?,
these rights are not meaningfully elevated in
the Zero Draft (paras 17, 21, 28). Furthermore,
despite adamant calls by civil society throughout
the Post-2015 processes, the Zero Draft
fails to recognize and respond to the demands
of the dominant development model (paras II
7, III 3).
We welcome the Zero Draft’s suggestion that
the follow-up and review processes will, inter
alia, be open and inclusive, supported by an
enabling environment for the participation of
all people and stakeholders and that they will
build on existing platforms and processes and
aim to minimize the reporting burden on national
administrations.3 However, it is essential
that the follow-up and review principles and
mechanisms set out in this narrative be explicitly
tied to human rights norms and frameworks.
-
cy, avoiding excessive reporting burdens, and
taking advantage of existing mechanisms and
platforms.
As we have noted in this critique of the Zero
Draft, an agenda rooted in human rights would
not only measure the short- and long-term im-
also would ensure that the processes of designing,
implementing, and monitoring policies
-
based framework would increase the likelihood
that people have a voice within policy and decision-
making spaces at the national, regional,
and global levels. This is especially important
for groups that tend to be marginalized from
the spaces where policy determinations are
made.
3 Follow-up and Review, paragraphs 1-3, Zero Draft
Ensure Effective Participation of Affected Communities and Civil Society
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
III. Follow-up and Review
Global Level
The NGO Mining Working Group (MWG) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
-
cates at and through the United Nations for human and environmental rights as related to
extractive industries.
Member Organizations of the Mining Working Group
Blue Planet Project
Council of Canadians
Congregation of the Mission
Dominican Leadership Conference
Edmund Rice International
Feminist Task Force
Franciscans International
Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Council (GOAC)
International Presentation Association
Loretto Community
Marianists International
Medical Mission Sisters
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI)
Passionists International
Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary
Salesian Missions
Sisters of Charity Federation
Sisters of Mercy, Mercy International Association: Global Action
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur
Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
Society of the Sacred Heart
Temple of Understanding
UNANIMA International
United Methodist Women, the United Methodist Church
VIVAT International
Yamasi People, Southeast Indigenous Peoples Center
For further information and follow-up, contact:
Amanda Lyons
Meera Karunananthan
meera@canadians.org
for the Agenda to “take the bold and transformative steps needed to shift the world on to a
sustainable path” (Zero Draft preamble), if the narrative and design fail to acknowledge and address
the root causes of systemic problems.
The Zero Draft makes an important stocktaking assessment of our world today: rising inequalities within
and among nations; enormous disparities, of opportunity, wealth and power; growing unemploy-
-
ronmental degradation, and climate change (para. 12). Yet the narrative and orientation willfully ignore
the role that neoliberal development policies - and especially the extractive development model - have
played in creating and exacerbating these problems.
As a global community we must acknowledge that much of the violence, inequality, and poverty that
two years of post-2015 civil society consultations have entered into evidence this development-based
violence and marginalization and especially its devastating and disproportionate impact on women,
indigenous peoples, and peasant communities.
To be coherent with the objectives of sustainable development, we must guarantee that the Agenda
rights-holders, and that its proposed solutions are sustainable.1
The text accompanying the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be a reference point for the
orientation and objectives. The NGO Mining Working Group presents these proposed amendments and
1. Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda in human rights
2. Make poverty eradication the objective over economic growth and prosperity
3. Explicitly name and include the human right to water and sanitation in priority themes
4. Safeguard essential public services from public private partnerships (PPPs)
1 Mining Working Group, Advocacy Brief, “A Rights-Based Approach to Resource Extraction in the Pursuit of Sustainable Development” (May 2015), available
at http://miningwg.com/resources-2/mwg-advocacy-brief/.
NGO Mining Working Group
Response to Zero Draft of the Outcome Document for the
United Nations Summit to Adopt the Post-2015 Development
Agenda
Transforming our World by 2030: A New Agenda for Global Action
2
1 Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda
in Human Rights
Civil society and UN Special Procedures have been unequivocal
in calling on States to anchor the Post-2015
Development Agenda in human rights principles and
the existing human rights framework. Yet far from being
rooted in a robust human rights framework, the Zero
Draft represents a notable regression in terms of recognizing
human rights compared to the Rio+20 outcome
document and the Millennium Declaration.
The marginalization of human rights in the Zero Draft
-
standing of human rights that has dominated much of
the Intergovernmental Negotiations to date. As civil
society has repeatedly argued and shown, not only is
a rights-based agenda ethically and legally mandated,
a rights-based approach is also pragmatic in terms of,
inter alia: reaching the objectives of promoting equality
and non-discrimination; ensuring participation by all
rights-holders; taking advantage of existing resources,
knowledge, and platforms; evaluating policy results;
and increasing accountability.
It is worth clarifying that rights-based accountability
serves both a corrective function of addressing wrongdoing
and also a pragmatic and preventative function:
“helping to determine which aspects of policy or service
delivery are working, so they can be built on, and which
aspects need to be adjusted. Accountability principles
and mechanisms can improve policymaking by identifying
systemic failures that need to be overcome in order
-
sponsive.”1
A further limitation evident in the conception of human
rights in the Zero Draft is a focus only on States’ negative
obligations to respect human rights, to refrain from
interfering with or curtailing human rights. Unlike previous
UN development documents2 , there is no acknowledgment
in the text of the State obligations to protect
the human rights of individuals and groups from abuses
by third parties including transnational corporations un-
rights or take positive action to guarantee the enjoyment
of basic human rights.
1 OHCHR, Who will be accountable, p. ix
2 Millennium Declaration, Rio+20 outcome document
Agenda is “guided” by human rights principles while
the document fails to explicitly name the international
human rights framework and outline strategies to realize
human rights commitments. The general reference
to “international law” (paras. 11 & 16) instead of human
rights law in the Zero Draft concerns us, given the current
context in which trade and investment protection
laws are promoted at the expense of human rights and
national sovereignty.3 Human rights should be seen as
serving an obligatory and functional role in the achievement
of the SDGs rather than as one of many examples
of outcomes of the SDG goals and targets alongside
fuzzy concepts like “justice and equality” and “shared
prosperity” (para. 15).
Grounding the SDGs in a human rights framework would
ensure stronger accountability by enabling monitoring
and review through existing mechanisms. The human
rights mechanisms, including the Human Rights Council,
the Special Procedures, the Treaty Bodies, and the
Universal Periodic Review, have proven to be important
spaces for evaluating human rights compliance of states
and monitoring human rights abuses by third parties.
Finally, a rights-based approach is the only way to operationalize
the commitment to “leave no one behind.”
Anchoring the Post-2015 framework in human rights
would move the development agenda from a charity-
based approach to a justice approach that clearly
delineates the responsibilities and entitlements of each
actor: people as rights-holders, national governments
-
tiated responsibilities.4
Though far from perfect, the Chapeau of the Open Work-
-
itly name and recognize human rights, and it was negotiated
in a highly inclusive and transparent manner. We
therefore regret to see this important piece of the Post-
2015 package relegated to Annex 3, as an afterthought
rather than an overarching frame for the Post 2015 Development
Agenda. In addition to the proposed textual
amendments below, we recommend that the Chapeau
text be brought into the introduction of the Agenda.
3 See statement by 10 UN experts: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/
DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16031&LangID=E
4 Joint Statement, Human Rights for All Post-2015 (Dec. 10, 2013), available at
http://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/5123joint.statem….
dec10.pdf.
Anchor the Post-2015 Development Agenda in Human Rights
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
III. Follow-up and Review
Global Level
4
2 Make Poverty Eradication the Objective
over Economic Growth and Prosperity
and prosperity with poverty eradication
and does not address the evidence that the
growing concentration of wealth associated
with growth-based development policies
has in fact contributed to the proliferation
and deepening of poverty. The text fails to
acknowledge the many examples where
policies aimed at economic growth and
prosperity for some few have undermined
development goals for many others, generating
insecurity and aggravating marginalization.
The Agenda must not perpetuate
the faulty premise that economic prosperity
will automatically generate positive human
and ecological development where it is most
needed.
This faulty orientation disregards the repeated
calls for a rights-based approach and
the redistribution of wealth as central strategies
for the eradication of poverty. Setting
out a shared understanding of poverty will
help contribute toward ensuring coherency
in this agenda with its stated objective of
poverty eradication.
For the UN, poverty is the “human condition
characterized by the sustained or chronic
deprivation of the resources, capabilities,
choices, security and power necessary for
the enjoyment of an adequate standard of
living and other civil, cultural, economic, political,
and social rights.”1 Poverty then is not
only characterized by lack of income, but is
multidimensional.
1 Cite CESC, 2001; GP on Extreme Poverty.
Therefore, poverty eradication involves targeting
the root causes of injustice and ensuring
greater access to power and resources
for marginalized groups.
The Zero Draft’s reference to the “tyranny of
poverty” is appropriate in its recognition of
the power relations implicit in inequality and
poverty: it is this concentration of power and
resources at the expense of others’ agency
and rights that must be transformed. This
ought to be the driving orientation of the
agenda.
Instead, we see a global push for economic
growth at all costs. The Post-2015 Development
Agenda features economic growth as
a key and independent objective (preamble)
-
tutes “sustainable and inclusive” economic
growth. Growth is referenced as a means to
achieve the SDGs (para 24) and as an independent
priority of Member States that must
elements within the agenda (para 19).
To free the world from the tyranny of poverty,
we must recognize the structures and
systems that uphold this tyranny over peo-
checks on the power imbalance and structures
that perpetuate the cyclical injustice
of poverty. The Post-2015 package must
prioritize eradicating poverty over economic
growth and prosperity, enabling and creating
space for local and alternative models
of development that are grounded in human
rights and community participation.
Make Poverty Eradication the Objective over Economic Growth and Prosperity
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
6
3 Explicitly Name and Include the Human Right
to Water and Sanitation in Priority Themes
Although environmentalists, decision-makers and
the business sector agree that the deepening global
water crisis is the single largest challenge plaguing
the planet in the 21st century,1 the Zero Draft does
concern, nor its urgency. Goal 62 which combines
freshwater management targets and universal access
to water and sanitation services, is a fairly complex
and far-reaching goal dealing with a range of
urgent social and environmental issues. In addition,
water is a crosscutting theme that is a pre-condi-
health, and the production of food and energy.
Despite this, water is not included in Zero Draft paragraphs
20-28 that cover the major thematic issues
of the 17 SDGs. Brief mentions of water within the
document overlook the importance of the human
right to water and sanitation and fail to cover the
range and complexity of freshwater challenges
from this development agenda. To this end, moving
the Chapeau, which explicitly names the human
right to water to the third annex of the Zero Draft
relegates water from a top priority and shifts focus
away from viewing water as a matter of human
rights.
First and foremost, the human right to water and
sanitation must frame all goals, targets and indicators
dealing with water resource management and
universal access to water and sanitation services. As
noted in a call by 621 organizations from the global
water justice movement,3 explicit recognition of
the human right to water and sanitation is the only
way to safeguard scarce water supplies for the basic
needs of people and the planet against other competing
interests.
1 http://www.weforum.org/news/climate-change-and-water-shortage-mainconce…-
world-economic-forum-east-asia
2 6:Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for
all, Zero Draft,p.13
3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_ogobv2USnNajhoVTFnRnlwam-
FVc3dvNE1BcjY3RlprMU53&authuser=1
drinking water rather than the enjoyment of the human
right to water and sanitation that encompasses
other important principles (including availability,
As seen with the MDGs, emphasis on one aspect
of the normative content of this right leads to inappropriate
solutions that neglect the needs of the
most vulnerable segments of the population.
In addition, the solutions to freshwater scarcity in
-
cient use” and waste management (para 26). Because
of this shortcoming, the document fails to
appreciate the full extent of the current water crisis,
its humanitarian implications, and the obstacles it
will pose to the development agenda. An emphasis
to examine how water resources are distributed
and how water pollution is regulated. An emphasis
an approach that favors the status quo rather than
a willingness to challenge the unsustainable and
unjust manners in which watersheds are being depleted
and destroyed by a powerful few while resources
are denied to marginalized and vulnerable
segments of the population.
As the world water crisis deepens and proliferates, a
hierarchy of water use that prioritizes human rights
is essential to ensuring equitable and environmentally
sustainable use of limited supplies. If the Post-
2015 Development Agenda is to succeed, the text
In addition to amendments to existing paragraphs,
we call for an independent paragraph highlighting
the importance of the freshwater crisis and calling
for all SDG activities pertaining to freshwater
use and distribution to be framed within a human
rights-based approach. We propose the language
be drawn from UNGA Resolution 66/288 The Future
we Want.4
4 UNGA Resolution 66/280 para 121
Explicitly Name and Include the Human Right to Water and Sanitation in Priority Themes
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
8
4 Safeguard Essential Public Services from
Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
We emphasize the importance of an agen-
upholding the concern that, “In principle,
States have a legitimate interest in pursuing
channels that open up business interests
for their citizens. But undue deference
to business interests at the expense
of other legitimate interests such as human
rights, is a source of acute concern.”1
In failing to distinguish between stakeholders
and rights-holders, the agenda
remains ambiguous about whose interests
it serves. The framing of multi-stakeholder
processes as an attempt to create
“win-win cooperation”2 is a failure to recognize
the duty of the State to safeguard
the interests of rights-holders against
Post-2015 Development Agenda must
show a greater commitment to protecting
the interests of rights-holders rather than
attempting to facilitate compromises between
rights-holders and third parties.
In addition, the Zero Draft unequivocally
promotes business and private sector participation--
including through the Global
Partnerships framework (para 36)- without
acknowledging any of the risks associated
with this strategy. The call to “scale
up substantially public-private cooperation”
(para 39) is alarming in light of the
1 United Nations Special Rapporteur Maina Kiai, A/
HRC/29/25
2 Para 16, Zero Draft
disastrous experiences with privatization,
notably in the areas of water and sanitation,
health care, and education. For this
reason, the Post-2015 Development Agenda
should exclude essential public services
that implicate States’ obligations to
guarantee the human rights to water and
sanitation, education, and health from private
sector partnerships and from private
We are also concerned with the Zero
Draft’s linkage of the SDGs to the trade
agenda (34) despite repeated concerns by
civil society organizations, and recently by
10 UN experts about the adverse impacts
of the trade agenda and investment protection
mechanisms on human rights.3
Furthermore, development aid or loans
aimed at implementing the Post-2015 Development
Agenda must not be tied to
conditionalities forcing privatization or
trade liberalization.
Finally, the Global Partnership for development
within the agenda must be understood
as a partnership between State
actors, as States are accountable for their
human rights obligations (including extra-
territorial) and are accountable to
their citizens.
3 UN experts voice concern over adverse impact of free
trade and investment agreements on human rights at http://
www.ohchr.org/FR/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx-
?NewsID=16031&LangID=E#sthash.rXZJLoCy.dpuf
Safeguard Essential Public Services from Public Private Partnerships (PPPs)
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
10
5
Communities and Civil Society
The experience of poverty is characterized by
lack of capabilities, opportunities, choices, security,
and social power. Lack of power is a universal
characteristic of poverty that manifests
itself in many ways; at its core is the inability
-
1 Therefore, empowerment
and agency are not just tangential or procedural
objectives for the Agenda but rather
required elements of poverty eradication.
To be coherent with the stated commitment to
eradicate and transform the tyranny of poverty,
there must be a manifest commitment to empowering
those that have systematically been
marginalized from the decision-making spaces
If the Post-2015 Development Agenda is to
deliver on people-centered sustainable development,
it must prioritize rights-holders over
stakeholders and correct ambiguous language
in this regard (paras 36, 37 and III 3, 9, 14). In
participation by rights-holders is essential for
development. Thus, the Post-2015 narrative
must challenge existing power relations that
restrict people’s agency and enable free, in-
and outcomes.2 One integral part of this is promoting
and monitoring related rights such as
access to information, freedom of expression
-
tive remedy for harms committed. However,
1 http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.
aspx?NewsID=13407&LangID=E. See also Franciscans International,
Development: Sustainable for whom?, http://franciscansinternational.
-
2 http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.
aspx?NewsID=13407&LangID=E. See also Franciscans International,
Development: Sustainable for whom?,
these rights are not meaningfully elevated in
the Zero Draft (paras 17, 21, 28). Furthermore,
despite adamant calls by civil society throughout
the Post-2015 processes, the Zero Draft
fails to recognize and respond to the demands
of the dominant development model (paras II
7, III 3).
We welcome the Zero Draft’s suggestion that
the follow-up and review processes will, inter
alia, be open and inclusive, supported by an
enabling environment for the participation of
all people and stakeholders and that they will
build on existing platforms and processes and
aim to minimize the reporting burden on national
administrations.3 However, it is essential
that the follow-up and review principles and
mechanisms set out in this narrative be explicitly
tied to human rights norms and frameworks.
-
cy, avoiding excessive reporting burdens, and
taking advantage of existing mechanisms and
platforms.
As we have noted in this critique of the Zero
Draft, an agenda rooted in human rights would
not only measure the short- and long-term im-
also would ensure that the processes of designing,
implementing, and monitoring policies
-
based framework would increase the likelihood
that people have a voice within policy and decision-
making spaces at the national, regional,
and global levels. This is especially important
for groups that tend to be marginalized from
the spaces where policy determinations are
made.
3 Follow-up and Review, paragraphs 1-3, Zero Draft
Ensure Effective Participation of Affected Communities and Civil Society
MWG Proposed Changes to Text
III. Follow-up and Review
Global Level
The NGO Mining Working Group (MWG) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
-
cates at and through the United Nations for human and environmental rights as related to
extractive industries.
Member Organizations of the Mining Working Group
Blue Planet Project
Council of Canadians
Congregation of the Mission
Dominican Leadership Conference
Edmund Rice International
Feminist Task Force
Franciscans International
Greek Orthodox Archdiocesan Council (GOAC)
International Presentation Association
Loretto Community
Marianists International
Medical Mission Sisters
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI)
Passionists International
Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary
Salesian Missions
Sisters of Charity Federation
Sisters of Mercy, Mercy International Association: Global Action
Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur
Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
Society of the Sacred Heart
Temple of Understanding
UNANIMA International
United Methodist Women, the United Methodist Church
VIVAT International
Yamasi People, Southeast Indigenous Peoples Center
For further information and follow-up, contact:
Amanda Lyons
Meera Karunananthan
meera@canadians.org