Hi Joe (and anyone else that is interested).

Another person and I are volunteering to edit the Right to Water page on Wikipedia for the SuSanA Edit-a-Thon between March 19th and March 21st . We are looking for others who want to join us on this same page. Would you be interested?

We are organizing our efforts by reading the article and highlighting possible changes to occur on a Google Drive document . Then we are going to meet virtually (she from the United States and myself from France) for a few hours to make those changes on Sunday, March 19th from 18h-21h CET.

If you want to join our little virtual sub-group for this page, just reply to this message.

Hi Elisabeth. Thanks for this background. It is essential. I don't want to complicate the issue further, but perhaps there might be a couple ways to move forward with this one: change the name as you suggest and/or create another new page for a human right to sanitation. Here is my understanding.

The UN General Assembly resolution of November 2015 was unique because it was the first to recognize two rights: one for water and one for sanitation. Resolution 7/169 was called "The human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation." With an "s" after human right here.

At the same time, I think if we create two separate pages a lot of the history will have to be repeated on both pages (e.g. the evolution of international recognition to human rights, critiques to human rights framework, etc.). So I vote for your idea of changing the title for now. Let me start researching how to do that in Wikipedia.

Your knowledge/insight are great. If you have other ideas, please feel free to share. You can see our ideas for changes on the working document (in progress). I will also reply to that other SuSanA forum post to see if we can get more people on this page. The more people the better. It would especially be great to have a lawyer or some NGOs working on it.

Best. Abby

Dear Abby,

That sounds like a great plan!

The Wikipedia article on "Right to Water" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_water) is a really important one to get right.

A year and a half ago, I wrote about it on the Forum and Joe Turner reacted, see here:
forum.susana.org/component/kunena/181-hu...itation-on-wikipedia

You could continue discussion in that thread on the forum if you like to get more SuSanA members involved..

One really important issue is that we should consider pushing for a name change of the article. Name changes are not so easy to do and require some concensus. Therefor, I think you should very soon write on the talk page of the article about that. I've written about it here a while ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Right_to_wate...and_sanitation.22.3F

This is what I wrote:

Change article name to "Right to water and sanitation"?[edit source]

I think the name of the article should be changed to "Right to water and sanitation", or "Human right to water and sanitation" (abbreviated as HRWS). I would say the latter is the more commonly used term now. As far as I know, in the international discourse it is now usually "right to water and sanitation". EvM-Susana (talk) 08:09, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree, this seems to me to be ignoring almost entirely the UN declared Right to Sanitation as part of the HRWS. I have changed the first sentence to use the words in the 2010 UN GA statement, but more work needs to be done to discuss properly the theme.

I think other authors have tried here to discuss the whole notion of a "right to water", but in my opinion the UN declaration should be front-and-centre of the article, which therefore should include prominently the right to sanitation. Therefore I believe the page should actually be "Human Right to Water and Sanitation." I can't see a reason why the existing content would not fit within that. JMWt (talk) 08:43, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

I would like to put up again on my suggestion from September 2015 to change the name of this article. If there are no objections within a week or so, I will go ahead (I don't actually know where I have to go to get the article name change done - can anyone advise on that?).EvMsmile (talk) 23:18, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

So as there were no objections since then and if you agree then this name change request could be set in motion now.
Check on Wikipedia help how to change the name of an article. From memory one needs to request it somewhere. I can help with that if needed.

Regards,
Elisabeth

P.S. No need to wait for Sunday 19 March noon GMT if you're really keen, you can already start editing now; we have set up the system that edits mady by people who have registered for the edit-a-thon in Dashboard (like you have) are counted towards outcomes of the event for the whole month of March.
The editors registered so far are shown here: outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Su..._March_2017/students

For those how haven't registered on Outreach Dashboard for the event yet, click here (with your Wikipedia account name):
outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Su...2017?enroll=xjwmpagf

I've made a few first changes, particularly in the first lines, to emphasis the importance of the right as a Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS). There is still a lot of work which could be done on the page.

On Wikipedia there is a page called "Right to water" which deals with what we call the "Human right to water and sanitation".
I recently came across it and asked Ricard Gene* if he thought it was any good. Here is what Ricard replied (I have also added that to the talk page of the article):

- I would mention in the title and integrate in the text the right to sanitation
- In terms of contents, my feeling is that the description of the normative and cross-cutting criteria is not clear ... not sure if a more detailed description would help the reader better understand the scope / content of this HHRR. Similarly, no specific mention is made in relation to the concept of progressive realisation. And the issues of "right-holders" and "duty-bearers" are not clearly stated.
- Which have been the criteria when listing the organizations working on the right to water and sanitation? this list could include other relevant organisations, such as COHRE, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Programme, UN-Habitat, The Danish Institute, AECID (see for instance www.aecid.es/Centro-Documentacion/Docume...0y%20Saneamiento.pdf), etc.

Perhaps some SuSanA members have an interest in this topic and would take the time to improve the Wikipedia page? Or, if you are a lecturer, how about getting your students involved?
Interestingly, this page was part of an educational assignment by the University of Canterbury/International Human Rights Law in New Zealand, see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_Program:...Rights_Law_(2014_S1)

I still think it is an awesome idea to set up student assignments to improve or create Wikipedia pages.

Regards,
Elisabeth

* Ricard was one of the experts in the thematic discussion on the sanitation ladder, see one of his posts here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/185-th...itation-ladder#12001