Claim Your Water Rights: 5 years of tangible and transformative impact

End Water Poverty (EWP) is pleased to publish a new report highlighting the vibrancy and effectiveness of locally-led, rights-based campaigning. 

Over the last five years EWP has remained focused and determined in holding governments accountable and enforcing the human rights to water and sanitation at local and national level. Claim Your Water Rights has consistently demonstrated the power of grassroots organising and civil society campaigning. The impact has been tangible, wide-reaching, and in some cases, transformative. Our members’ achievements include: multiple instances of legal and policy reform; enforcing accountability over corporate contamination; starting water rights movements; and supporting hundreds of thousands of people across multiple countries to claim tangible improvements to water and sanitation services.

Claim Your Water Rights: 5 Years of Tangible and Transformative Impact compiles actions, achievements, photos, and quotes from members who have worked on Claim Your Water Rights over the last five years. The report includes: an overview of the campaign’s origins, objectives and ethos; a global map with key member achievements; and detailed profiles from the 17 different countries where the campaign has a presence. The report ends with the following recommendations to civil society, funders, and the international development community:

1. Centre communities’ demands, dignity, and agency.
2. Trust the skills, experience, and expertise of local and national civil society.
3. Fund civil society to design and deliver context-specific, community-led action.
4. Sustain action and funding over multiple years to secure transformative results.
5. Organise, mobilise, and enfranchise people to hold their governments accountable and claim their human rights to water and sanitation.

We are deeply grateful to the task team and our members for their contributions to this report and exceptional work on the campaign.

The report was authored by EWP’s senior engagement officer Sam Taylor, who departs the coalition today after nearly six years in the role. Sam said: “It has been an absolute privilege to support the remarkable work of so many talented, committed water rights advocates across the world. I hope this report will inspire further action towards holding governments accountable to their water rights obligations, as well as a concerted shift towards the localisation, decentralisation, and decolonisation of international development.”