Water 2020, 12, 340 3 of 28 In some cases, water access challenges are a factor contributing to displacement, while in others water access limitations follow forced migration and armed conflict. At times, water is a factor in both the cause and effects of displacement. How has international law responded to varying scenarios in which political pressures have presented significant threats to the human right to water, and how can international law be expected to respond as these challenges increase? As Anders Jägerskog and Pasquale Steduto note, while water crises in places including Syria and Gaza are not the “direct causes of conflict”, these crises “fuel the frustrations that drive instability . . . The compounding nature of water and fragility gives rise to a vicious cycle . . . with each reinforcing the other in a dangerous spiral” [22]. What role does international law play in contributing to this “vicious cycle”? Can international law ameliorate the challenges associated with this cycle? To address “global water challenges”, the United Nations (UN) declared 2005–2015 the “International Decade for Action, ‘Water for Life’”. These aspirations were restated in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Goal 6—"ensure access to water and sanitation for all” [23]. More concretely, in 2010, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) issued Resolution 64/292: The human right to water and sanitation [24]. Though a significant step, enforceability of the human right to water is severely lacking. Enforceability, a widespread challenge in international law, is truly a pipe dream for the human right to water. There is no independent treaty explicitly recognising and providing guidelines for the protection of a human right to water. Moreover, in 2010, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) issued resolution 15/9, which “affirmed that the right to water and sanitation is derived from the existing right to an adequate standard of living” in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) [25]. In reality, however, the ICESCR offers no potential for an enforceable human right to water, as implementation guidelines are not established. ‘Binding’ in principle should not be confused with ‘enforceable’ in practice. As Edith Brown Weiss argues, grounding a right to water in the ICESCR is “a somewhat arbitrary choice” [26]. This declaration of an implicit right to water appears to have been more pomp and circumstance than an indication of substantive change. UNHRC Resolution 18/1 promisingly offered a greater degree of specificity but again failed to establish how states ought to monitor water access and quality, accountability measures for failing to do so, or the particular needs of stateless people [27]. As Christine Evans notes, “International law is developed between states, based upon the principle of sovereignty, and, as such, has been dictated largely by the interests of states rather than individuals” [28]. It logically follows that those who fall outside the bounds of sovereign states are disadvantaged when it comes to protections afforded by international treaties—protections that are, in principle, universally applicable but are in practice enforced by states upon their citizens. (State reporting mechanisms have been developed and documented, such as by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights [29]. The successes and failures of such reporting mechanisms are worthy of further analysis, though beyond the scope of this article. This article is primarily concerned with the human right to water as it concerns those people who are afforded the least protection from state mechanisms, including reporting mechanisms.) Those without citizenship are without a state to defend their rights as set forth in international treaties. Statelessness is not a clear-cut category, however, and many people who reside in their territories of origin—IDPs and those born in occupied territory—find themselves “effectively stateless” and “resembl[ing] refugees in their relative rightlessness” [30,31]. The legal scholar Antony Anghie asks, “What does it mean to say that ‘international law governs sovereign states’ when certain societies were denied sovereign status? . . . What continuing effects follow from this exclusion?” [32]. This article suggests that contemporary manifestations of water injustice are, in many cases, examples of the “continuing effects” of excluding certain groups from sovereign status—excluding them from citizenship and, by extension, from international law. Water injustice’s dominance in marginalised communities does not appear coincidental.