A/HRC/42/47 I. Introduction 1. Pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 33/10, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, Léo Heller, was mandated to work on identifying challenges and obstacles to the full realization of those rights, as well as protection gaps, good practices and enabling factors. In the present report, he focuses on the realization of the human rights to water and sanitation in spheres of life beyond the household, with a particular emphasis on public spaces. 2. The methodology for the report included desk research and responses to questionnaires sent to States and to civil society organizations, which elicited 15 submissions.1 In addition, the Special Rapporteur convened a brainstorming round table on 11 September 2018 in Geneva. 3. In most societies, many groups and individuals rely on places beyond the scope of the household to live and enjoy their rights, including their rights to water and sanitation. These groups include persons in penal institutions and detention centres, health-care professionals and patients who spend long periods in hospitals and health centres, students in boarding schools and workers who are required to spend considerable lengths of time in open workplaces. They also include people who reside in those spheres because of homelessness, people living in poverty who may lack access to water and sanitation in or near their homes and people who work formally or informally in the public spaces of urban areas. More broadly, they include the general public who commute daily. Even if people can access water and sanitation at the household level, spheres of life beyond the household remain highly relevant, as the need to access water and sanitation does not simply abate during periods when people are outside the home. Indeed, it is vital that everyone is able to fully enjoy their human rights to water and sanitation everywhere. 4. However, recognition of the relevance of the human rights to water and sanitation in many spheres beyond the home is evidently lacking and few States have adopted measures to ensure the realization of those rights. As a result, for many, water and sanitation in spheres beyond the home are not adequately available, accessible, acceptable, safe or affordable and either people who rely on such services are invisible for monitoring purposes. 2 Despite the focus of State water and sanitation policies falling largely on improving access at the household level, the importance of access to water and sanitation in many spheres outside the home has been largely recognized by the mandate of the Special Rapporteur in country visit reports and through communication letters. During his official visits, the Special Rapporteur has encountered numerous individuals, groups and communities whose need for access to water and sanitation extends beyond the household and whose lives are negatively impacted when such access is inadequate. In India, owing to the insufficient number of public toilets, he discovered street vendors who had no choice but to pay the guards of nearby buildings to access their facilities (A/HRC/39/55/Add.1, para. 23). In Malaysia, he learned of the difficulties faced by transgender and gender nonconforming persons when accessing sanitation amenities in their workplaces, owing to their employers forcing them to only use toilets which match the gender they were assigned at birth (A/HRC/42/47/Add.2, para. 58). 5. In light of the clear need for people to access water and sanitation beyond the domestic sphere and in consideration of the obligations of States to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights to water and sanitation for all people, ignoring those needs can result in a human rights gap. Accordingly, in the present report the Special Rapporteur seeks to provide a platform to clarify the vital need for a greater consideration of spheres of life beyond the household when determining how to progressively realize the human rights to water and sanitation. Among the different spheres of life beyond the household, the report 1 2 2 See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/WaterAndSanitation/SRWater/Pages/PublicSpaces.aspx. See Roy Carr-Hill, “Missing millions and measuring development progress”, World Development, vol. 46 (June 2013).