Next Steps in Detroit: UN Special Rapporteurs Vindicate The Rights to Water and Human Dignity
On October 20, 2014, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water issued a joint statement at the close of their informal visit to Detroit,. While there, the two UN officials investigated the impacts of the city’s aggressive policies of shutting off water to 27,000 individuals unable to pay their water bills.
According to the Rapporteurs’ joint statement, “[d]isconnections of water due to non-payment are permissible if it can be shown that the resident is able to pay but is not paying. When people are genuinely unable to pay the bill, it is the State’s obligation to provide urgent measures, including financial assistance, a specially low tariff or subsidies, to ensure access to essential water and sanitation for all. Not doing so amounts to a human rights violation.”
Mindful of the fact that the US has not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the two Rapporteurs framed their concerns around the US’s binding obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racism, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For example, the joint statement pointed out that access to water is a prerequisite to achieving the “right to life” and dignity guaranteed under the ICCPR, and noted that residents who were shut off had no recourse to lawyers to challenge such determinations. Further, the Rapporteurs raised questions about racial impact of the cut-offs, in light of US obligations under CERD, and called for a federal investigation of these disparate racial impacts.
Interestingly, the joint statement stresses that the responsibility for ensuring the human rights to water and adequate housing must be implemented at every level of government. The Special Rapporteurs’ recommendations are leveled not only at Detroit, but also at the State of Michigan and federal authorities. For example, the UN officials recommend that the state and federal government utilize their spending powers to condition funding on the city’s provision of adequate water to residents. The City of Detroit, they recommend, should have in place emergency services for those who are cut off. And expanding on a recommendation made by the Special Rapporteur on the right to water in 2011, the two officials assert that the United States Government, the State of Michigan and the City of Detroit should adopt a mandatory federal minimum standard on affordability for water and sanitation.
Though the Special Rapporteurs visited the city at the behest of civil society organizations, they met with the Mayor and City Council of Detroit as well as members of civil society. Last summer, Michigan Senator John Conyers reached out to President Obama and the Secretary of HHS to seek greater federal oversight and involvement. However, to date the federal presence has been felt most keenly in the form of the U.S. bankruptcy judge who has ruled that Detroit residents have no right to water, and that the cut-offs can continue. The Special Rapporteurs’ statement took pains to point out that federal courts, like the other branches, are also bound by international human rights obligations.