Water 2020, 12, 340 6 of 28 2.1. Law and Sovereignty Weiss notes that a “traditional assumption” in international law has been that “it is not necessary to pierce the veil of sovereignty to unpack the State. Today, however, international water disputes show the necessity of doing so” [26]. International water law has not progressed in more than two decades since the UNWC was written to account for how climate change, population growth, increasing water scarcity, geopolitical conflict, and international security concerns pose new threats to water resources and global dependence on them and has been devoid of development on the specifics of the human right to water beyond grandiose, broad declarations. As Benhabib notes, “There is not only a tension, but often an outright contradiction, between human rights declarations and states’ sovereign claims” [37]. International law on water exemplifies this contradiction—states are reluctant to ratify international treaties that limit control over their water resources. The consequence of this reluctance is that many states are not even willing to ratify the already severely limited conventions addressing water rights. The UNWC was just entered into force in 2014 when a 35th state acceded to the Convention, 17 years after it was adopted [40]. As Marc Weller writes, “It is a defining feature of the classical international system that obligations cannot be imposed upon states against their will” [41]. Iraq, Syria, and Yemen are signatories, but this has done little to defend civilians’ water rights in these states. Stephen McCaffrey, former International Law Commission Special Rapporteur for water law, was instrumental in drafting the UNWC and argues that, within the UNWC, “emphasis on prevention is important, since it is often difficult to stop or modify an activity once it has begun, and it can be very complicated and expensive, if . . . possible, to remedy harm once caused”. In the Palestinian and Yemeni cases, and others, there has not been willingness to “stop or modify” activities that are primary causes of water crimes. Thus, two decades since UNWC adoption, I argue that it is overdue that the part of the Convention dealing with what happens when harmful activities are not “stop[ped] or modif[ied]” is fleshed out [42]. 2.2. Statelessness On Arendt’s views of statelessness and human rights, Benhabib writes: Statelessness, or the loss of nationality status, [Arendt] argued, was tantamount to the loss of all rights. The stateless were deprived not only of their citizenship rights; they were deprived of any human rights . . . The loss of citizenship rights, therefore, contrary to all human rights declarations, was politically tantamount to the loss of human rights altogether. [37] Water is the most essential resource for human life, yet those who do not fit neatly into the confines of the nation-state system fall victim to a broken legal system that fails to formalise a definition for protection of the human right to water. If loss of citizenship is “politically tantamount to the loss of human rights altogether” and human rights are inextricably intertwined with civil rights, what are the implications for access to essential resources for the stateless and displaced? Political factors so often overpower legal ideals, but a world in which basic rights to water are not protected is a world in which people with ambiguous legal statuses are at an inherent disadvantage with respect to securing water needed not only to survive but also to live lives with dignity and meaning. 3. International Law and Water Politics: Dissonances and Overlaps International law has long been a central focus for multiple sides of the world’s most pressing unresolved conflicts. For states accused of disregarding international treaties, international law is often selectively dismissed as illegitimate or biased. Historically, for people living in conflict zones seeking means of legal protection, international law is at times heralded as a means of defence and a productive tool to attract international awareness to the injustice of their plight and at other times disparaged merely as a virtuous—albeit totally unenforceable—ideal of justice. As Andrew Clapham notes, “Human rights law is special as it often suggests that other law is inadequate or unjust”,