A/HRC/6/3 page 8 highlighted the importance of the right to water for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related to water and sanitation.17 National constitutions, legislation and jurisprudence have also recognized water as a human right. National experiences brought to the attention of OHCHR also revealed that many countries have adopted specific legislation regulating access to safe drinking water. 6. While human rights treaties do not recognize access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a human right per se, specific obligations in relation to access to safe drinking water and sanitation have been increasingly and explicitly recognized in core human rights treaties, mainly as part of the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health. With the exception of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (ICRMW), all recently adopted human rights treaties entail specific obligations in relation to access to safe drinking water and, to a lesser extent, sanitation. Obligations in relation to access to safe drinking water and sanitation are also implicit in a number of human rights treaties and are derived from obligations pertaining to the promotion and protection of other human rights. 7. In interpreting the right to life under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, (ICCPR), the Human Rights Committee (HRC) stressed that besides protecting against the active taking of life, the right also places a duty on States to ensure access to the means of survival and requires States to adopt positive measures, notably to reduce infant mortality, increase life expectancy and eliminate malnutrition and epidemics.18 The Inter-American Court of Human Rights also interpreted the right to life as including access to conditions that guarantee a dignified life.19 This interpretation finds a specific resonance with the impact that lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation has on peoples’ health and life. Diarrhoeal dehydration claims the lives of nearly 2 million children every year and has killed more children in the last 10 years than all the people lost to armed conflict since the Second World War.20 Each and every day, some 3,900 children die because of dirty water, poor hygiene and lack of basic 17 Health, dignity and development: what will it take?, UN Millennium Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation, 2005, p. xiv, available at: http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/WaterComplete-lowres.pdf. 18 HRC general comment No. 6 (1982) on article 6 (Right to life), para. 5. 19 Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Caso Villagrán Morales y Otros (Caso de los “Niños de la Calle”), Sentencia de 19 de noviembre de 1999 (Ser. C) No.. 63, párr. 144. 20 Sanitation for All, UNICEF January 2000.