Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

Does the creation of new international human rights enhance the enjoyment of those rights among marginalized people? In this study, we examine the impact of the creation of an international human right to water and sanitation in 2010 on the marginalized peoples in nineteen countries of the Middle East that has home to a variety of regimes including electoral democracies, absolute monarchies, and single-party dictatorships. Has the right become an effective legal and/or political tool (Sikkink 2017) or just a meaningless parchment right (Posner 2014)? Our empirical strategy is twofold. First, we systematically analyze the constitutions and founding documents of the Middle East regimes and identify the clauses about the right to water as a human right. We then offer a general survey how these clauses are utilized by activists. Next, as an illustrative case study, we focus on politics of popular mobilization against the proliferation of hydropower plants in Turkey in the last fifteen years. We study how the activists utilized international treaties and national laws to claim access to water as a human right and the effectiveness of these strategies.