ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the degree of hardship experienced by marginalized households in relationship to international human rights agreements and international customary law in respect to water. In Chapra, access to a sufficient and predictable supply of water is the prerequisite for realizing other human rights to food, employment, health care, education and housing. Human rights violations in Chapra are inter-generational when families are displaced permanently from their ancestral homes with no chance of recovering them. The government of Bangladesh is responsible for worsening water shortages through its own top-down water management programs like the Ganges-Kobodak and Gorai River Restoration Projects. River water rights violations at Chapra create ecological resource rights violations. The unregulated use of chemical fertilizers promoted by the state also violates laws that require states to minimize environmental harm by controlling pollution. Employment, food and education rights violations caused by water mismanagement and ecological resource failures also lead to health rights violations at Chapra.
