Should water be treated as a commodity or human right?

Water is a basic necessity. The fact is humans need water to survive. Recently, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights did not mention water explicitly. This sparked off a debate on whether water should be treated as a human right or as a commodity

There is a vast difference if water is treated as a human right as opposed to being just a commodity. If water is a human right, people from around the world need not worry about the cost of water as they are entitled to it. However, if it is a commodity, the people in third world countries would not get clean water and some may even die.

In my opinion, water should be treated as a human right.

I am a strong advocate of human rights. I am appalled by the fact that there are many people out there without clean water to drink while those who can help are doing nothing about it. I feel that everyone should be entitled to this basic survival need and no one should be deprived just because they are poor and cannot afford to pay for it.

I am blessed to be in Singapore. I just feel some of us may not realize people in the third world country do not necessarily get what we have here. We get clean water from the tap and we know it is safe to drink. Every Singaporean can afford it because water is heavily subsidized by the government. However, the situation is quite different in the third world countries which do not have the technology know-how to treat dirty water to get clean water and at the same time, cannot afford to buy treated water because they are poor. To many, clean water is a luxury far beyond their reach.

A total of 1.3 million children under the age of six die each year from drinking infected water based on statistics released in 2004. It irks me to know that while we shower in clean water and drink bottled mineral water because some of us did not like the taste of the tap water, many people out there are drinking from the well and some even have no choice but to drink water they know is contaminated.

I strongly feel that the only way to solve this disparity issue is to make water a human right for everyone, the poor and the rich in the first world and third world countries.

Deep down, I do know that this is a far-fetched ideology which may sound good in theory and argument, but it will never be practiced in real life. There are too many unanswered questions to make it happen. The most basic question is who would pay to clean the water for the third world countries?

In conclusion, while I think water should be treated as human right, I accept the fact that it will not happen. I only hope that those who can afford will volunteer their help on humanitarian grounds when the need arises.