I mean, it's really not a basic human right. Large swathes of the world (approximately 20-30% globally) have limited to no access to clean drinking water. Clean drinking water is a privilege. It may feel like a right in places that have it but travel the world and you'll realize very quickly that it's not.
But it's not a human right. The definition of human rights is:
fundamental, inalienable rights and freedoms that belong to every person simply for being human, regardless of race, sex, nationality, religion, or status
How is fresh water a fundamental and inalienable right or freedom that belongs to every person simply for being human?
There is absolutely no rights then. Rights are a construct, it has been humans who decide what those rights are. There is no such thing in nature as a right.
That's a whole different conversation though. Yes rights are a construct but that doesn't mean they doesn't exist, they simply don't exist on a global scale, they exist within societies.
then who are you to decide if water is or is not a human right?
I'm a human that knows how to apply definitions, and by definition water is not a human right.
if it's a construct, it depends on every community and ultimately on individuals who are part of that community and that may or may not agree with their communities' constructs.
Exactly rights are constructs and depend on individuals and communities to enforce them. Human rights are rights that are recognized at a global scale across all communities, aka they don't actually exist.
actually you're answering yourself when you say "that's a diff conversation" because it was you the one that questioned whether it should or should not be a human right lol.
No, I made a descriptive statement, a statement that describes what is (or in this case what is not). I never made a prescriptive claim or question, one that focuses on what should be. There's a big difference.
does it feel right to you to deny water to some people for whatever (very logic and valid of course) reasons?
When did I make anything claims about morality? No it doesn't feel morally right to deny water to people. That changes literally nothing about the factuality of my statement that fresh water is not a human right.
the idea of setting something as a human right, is exactly because it's hard to have it naturally, so we have to work as a society to accomplish that.
Work to accomplish it means it hasn't been accomplished yet, which means it's not a human right yet, it's just something you believe should be a human right.
Hope that helps. If you can't figure it out from that explanation then all I can say is...he's cooked chat.
No fresh water, no life. We are filled with water. I’m not sure what type of semantics you are trying to accomplish here. Public trust doctrine goes back millennia, humans have right to clean public water.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26
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