Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

So the UN is trying to make water and sanitation a human right. It was described as a non binding aspirational goal. Which presumably is what the rest of the human rights are also based on a cursory examination of the others.

Here is a link to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr

As you can see there are 30 of them. What strikes me reading through the list is how few of them NZ has acheived at the moment without adding further rights on top.

1 "...human beings are... endowed with reason...." clearly whomever wrote this was living on a different planet from me. I meet humans on a daily basis who have virtually nil ability to reason.

8 "right to effective remedy for any acts violating the rights granted to him by law" nope not here, we all know that justice via our court system is excedingly expensive and in a number of instances government departments (the ones most likely to violate your rights) are exempt from prosocution

9 "no one shall be subject to abitrary arrest or detintion" except it seems if it suits the state, we all know that people can be detained on the suspicion of terrorisim so strike that one too.

11 "everyone is presumed inocent until proven guilty" except for tax cases in NZ where you have to prove innocence

12 "everyone is entitled to privacy" nope again we allow law enforcement agencies to routinely snoop on people (who are innocent until proven guilty remember)

13 "everyone has the right to leave the country" well as long as it is ok with the government having paid all your fines, obtained a passport and gotten another country to agree that you can go there.

15 "everyone has the right to a nationality" unless you are adopted from a foriegn country in which case you have no nationality until the government decides to give you one.

17 "no one shall be abitrarily deprived of their property" unless of course we need it for tax or perhaps we might want to build a road on it or perhaps we consider your house historic etc.

19 "everyone has the right to expression" unless of course we think that it is hate speech or you want to wear a gang patch or we otherwise disagree with your expression.

23 This one is all about employment and is completely indefensible as a "human right" since when has the "right" to form a trade union been an inalienable part of being a human being. I am confident that many generations of people could live and die without the need of a trade union. This article also assumes that work is some how a societal good which unless you are living in a comunist country it is not.

24 "the right to paid holidays" I can't rationalise the idea that holidays are a human right at all, presumably as a hunter gatherer if you sat on your bum too long you starved to death so when did holidays become a human right. Does this mean unemployed people are entitled to holidays? Why don't stay at home mums get holidays

And now they want to add water to the list, given that this is a necessity of life then this feels as least as reasonable as some of the other nonsense that is included in the declaration now, but how is this to be manifest? Is the first 2 litres a day for each citizen of water provided to be free and then the normal charging regime of direct charging or via rates cuts in and who by the way pays for the first 2 litres? If I am out in the country side etc does that mean I can trample peoples property rights (article 17) in order to asert my right to access to water.

In the debate a case was sighted of a community in Bolivia where a commercial company after putting a water scheme in place wished to deprive the locals of the right to collect rain water. OK I think I can accept that access to rain (or the weather more generally) is potentially a human right, however after that it gets a bit murky.

With all the brain power devoted to the UN shouldn't they be a bit smarter about what they are trying to acheive. "design a system for idiots and only idiots will use it'