"Water is Life"

This week, I will be shining a spotlight upon Patricia Kameri-Mbote, a renowned female academic who helped improve and conceptualise water and sanitation as an intersectional gender and human rights issue. Within her writing Kameri-Mbote uses human rights as a leverage rather than just “empty documents” that they sign at UN conventions. Patricia played an instrumental part in the 2015 publication of "Water is Life," having co-authored four of the sixteen chapters. This week’s focus will be rested on the empirical case study of Kenya.

Click here to see an enlarged (less blurry) version of the book
Source: Oxford Human Rights Hub 

The focus on "Water is Life," is due in part to the relevance of Black History month running currently at UCL and nationally. I hope that this blog post will help contribute to this month-long event but whilst also acknowledging that Black History simply cannot be confined to one month or one blog post. To learn more specifically about what UCL is doing for Black History month please click here.

Whilst simplistic looking, I found this infographic useful to provide a high level view of water, sanitation and gender in Kenya 
Source: Aljazeera

Throughout the chapter, Kameri-Mbote gives helpful statistics characterising the localised view of Kenya. Unsurprisingly, water and sanitation are crucial for both development and the reduction of poverty, health and security. Yet 48% of Kenyans lack access to basic sanitation solutions. Like elsewhere in Africa, the burden of collecting water in Kenya from outdoor sources disproportionately falls on women and girls and has damaging knock-on effects on other activities such as income generation and school attendance (Kameri-Mbote+ Kariuki, 2015.) Aside from this, Kameri-Mbote successfully notes that the experience to the right to water is not entirely homogenous in terms of class, gender and ethnicity. Evidently, to become closer to SDG 6 mentioned in the first blog post, the water and sanitation needs of women in Kenya need to be better cared for.

Kameri-Mbote speaks of the huge gender gaps that exist in access to and control over resources like land and water. This prevents female participation in water governance and their capacity to create water infrastructure projects. This figure greatly emphasises the problem; less than 5% of women have title deeds in Kenya. The problem is further worsened by the fact that land laws tend to privilege private usage and therefore further reduces female access to key water sources which are located on private land. We can now draw another inextricable link between water rights, gender and land ownership.

As Patricia rightfully put it;

"One cannot get...a water permit if one is not the owner of the land. Land ownership has therefore contributed to the exclusion of and discrimination against the landless, especially women, in accessing water" (Kameri-Mbote + Kariuke, 2015, p90)

This issue is only further exacerbated by the fact that decision making processes associated with individual ownership of water resources often discriminates against women; most governance institutions are made up of men. The roots of this largely lie in the Kenyan land reforms that were carried out in the 1950s. Whilst the constitution now has an article stating that women and men should be treated equally, with equal treatment as well to male and female productive water use, it will take time to see whether this will truly result in the realisation of the right of water.

I found Kameri-Mbote's case study of Kenya in "Water is Life," a wonderful way to have a more intersectional nexus to water, development and gender .The overlapping marginalization of gender, race and political exclusion demonstrated it is paramount to look at the “whole picture” to fully understand women’s experiences (Crenshaw, 1989). Despite the improving legal recognition of the right to water and sanitation, it is clear that States, not just Kenya, fail to fulfil the responsibility in practice. The human right to water and sanitation still needs to be achieved and remains a condition for the realization of other rights such as the right to food and the right to health. It is through better understanding of the similarities and disparities in the political and legal history of different African countries that we can in turn create better insights that feed into the future of improving water governance and ultimately better outcomes.

I would really recommend delving into the other case studies co-authored by Kameri-Mbote to establish some of the similarities and differences yourself.