About the campaign

End Water Poverty envisages an engaged, emboldened and united civil society coalition employing a range of context-specific, community-led strategies under the global banner of Claim Your Water Rights.

We launched the campaign on 10 December 2019 (International Human Rights Day). The first phase of Claim Your Water Rights aimed to build awareness, knowledge and confidence to advocate using the international human rights framework nationally and locally. Many members focused on raising public and political awareness of the human rights to water and sanitation, identifying communities whose rights had been violated and informing them of their entitlements as rights holders, while informing governments of their obligations as duty-bearers.

Members employed a range of rights claiming strategies including community mobilisation, coalition building, media influencing, government engagement, research, data documentation, protest, litigation and more. Such diverse approaches continue to produce tangible results, including legal reform, influencing governments’ COVID-19 responses, infrastructure improvements and numerous communities successfully claiming their rights in multiple countries.

In the second phase of Claim Your Water Rights we will deepen and broaden the campaign by diversifying grantees and sharpening strategies. The short-term efficacy and long-term impacts of different strategies depends on local, national and regional contexts. Now that we have lessons and experiences to draw on from 26 different members in 14 countries, we will jointly assess what has worked, where and why.

Read our strategy for the second phase of Claim Your Water Rights for more information.