Water 2020, 12, 340
21 of 28
In refugee camps in water-scarce countries such as Jordan, water access is a longstanding problem
for the country’s residents, and this problem impacts refugees living in densely populated camps,
particularly as Jordan’s refugee population has spiked amid crises in Syria and Iraq. Refugees comprised
one third of Jordan’s population in 2015, not including Palestinian refugees who further increase
this percentage significantly [93]. When host states are unable to supply refugees with safe water
through the construction of water infrastructure in camps, the responsibility falls on UNHCR and
NGOs operating within the camps. UNHCR estimates that more than half of worldwide refugee camps
are unable to provide the UNHCR minimum of 20 L of water per person per day for domestic use—a
level that does not even account for camp-wide services needs or requirements for schools and other
communal buildings [94].
While I was in Diavata, a Greek military-administered refugee camp in the northern Macedonia
region, the volunteer coordinator of a Greek NGO described to me how the camp director, a Greek
government official, had turned the construction of camp infrastructure into a bidding war—attempting
to pit individual NGOs against one another. The objective was to pressure competing organisations
to donate more funds for construction of desperately needed infrastructure in the quickest timespan,
thereby avoiding the need for contribution by the Greek government [95].
This strategy was, of course, counter-intuitive—asking the NGOs to pool funds and collaborate on
construction, supplemented with government funds, surely would have produced a superior outcome.
In such cases, it appears that government employees are instructed to avoid expenditure of government
funds at all costs, due to overwhelming costs associated with provision of basic services for refugees.
In Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp, inhabited by 81,000 Syrians, people receive an average of
35 L per person per day. This is due largely to work by Oxfam, UNICEF, Mercy Corps, and other
humanitarian organisations actively combating the rapid depletion of Zaatari’s aquifers in water-scarce
Jordan by supplying water tanks and managing water deliveries to the camps up to three times daily.
To provide some perspective, 35 L, though above UNHCR’s 20 L minimum, is the equivalent of an
average five-minute shower—a far cry from life in parts of pre-war Syria where residents became
accustomed to 70–145 L per person per day, [96] and barely within range of the previously discussed
bare minimum recommendations of 20–50 L per day.
In addition to UNHCR’s minimal recommendation of 20 L per person per day for domestic use
in refugee camps, the Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response
guidelines, established by a consortium of aid agencies, state that water sources should be less than
500 m from camp residents [97]. These guidelines do not create any legal obligations for host states
and NGOs to provide minimum amounts of water within reasonable access in refugee camps, nor do
refugee or human rights laws.
The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol focus mainly
on rights relating to persecution, movement, and location of refugees, not responsibilities of states,
intergovernmental organisations, and NGOs to provide water for refugees [98]. Thus, the human right
to water for refugees has been largely unaddressed in refugee law and falls under one or more of the
following domains:
(1) the human right to water for all people, regardless of political status; (2) IHL; (3) international
human rights law; or (4) international water law. Given the absence of a clearly defined human right
to water that creates enforceable obligations, the first category is unhelpful to all people in need of
water, especially vulnerable groups including refugees. The second category, IHL, is only applicable in
armed conflict and does not offer help for refugees and asylum seekers once they have fled conflict
zones. The third and fourth categories, international human rights law and international water law, as
this article has established, are insufficient to protect the human right to water in general, let alone
for stateless people without protection from the domestic laws of their home countries and facing
legal challenges in host countries. The relevant laws would be the UDHR or UNWC, both of which
are heavily focused on state responsibility and do not address the resource needs of stateless and
displaced people.