Human Rights to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) is a prerequisite for the realization of other human rights. As one of human rights the non-fulfillment of HRWS have a negative effect on the right to education which is guaranteed under article 13 of International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and article 17of African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and article 41(4) of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia constitution. ‘As an empowerment right, education is the primary vehicle by which economically and socially marginalized adults and children can lift themselves out of poverty and obtain the means to participate fully in their communities’. Despite this protection lack of appropriate supply of water forces children’s who share the significant burden of fetching water to walk long distances to reach water points which will lead to missing school. Students who miss school continuously miss so many lessons and finally they drop out. These become a great challenge for the applicability of right to education in rural parts of developing countries.
In the rural part of developing countries, girl child prohibited their right to education as they are sent to fetch water that takes half of their day. Moreover, the schools do not have water facilities that cause inconvenience to attend especially for girls during menstruation. For instance, primary schools that have water facilities are only 34.4% in Ethiopia. As a result, water and sanitation became one of the reasons that cause large gender gap in school attendance in many developing counties.
It is less contentious than the HRWS is a right that will lead to the protection, respecting and fulfillment of other human rights so, recognizing HRWS will lead to the protection of most of the human rights recognized in the international, regional and domestic human right instruments including the right to education. Therefore, concerned bodies should give due regard for the construction of water facilities and services in the areas where water points are fare from villages and schools that will have an impact to increase enrolment rate and decrease dropouts.
Monthly Archives: November 2017
Social Media diplomacy
We are living at the time of e-government which is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by a government to communicate and transact internally and externally with citizens, businesses, and other government organizations”. Canada also uses this method including social media such as Facebook to enhance its diplomatic relations with other countries. E-governance enhances internal effectiveness, efficiency, and economy in public administration including diplomacy. As one way of e-governance, the embassies of Canada in the US has a Facebook page except for LA and Detroit. But the mere existence of Facebook page for each embassy does not guarantee that the embassy is enhancing its internal effectiveness, efficiency, and economy.
From the 11 states that the Canada embassy exists 9 of embassies have a Facebook page. The message transfer, the followers, the likes, the shares and the number of posts can give us a basic clue about the contribution of this pages for e-governance. From the survey conducted it is confirmed that the posts do not have any relevance for the diplomacy, most of them are like news and can be accessible in other media. This can be confirmed by the likes, shares, and comments they have got, for seven days from October 27 to November 3 for 9 Facebook pages there where only 35 posts and they got 6 comments, 2 shares and 114 likes which are very small for government owns the Facebook page. This has a great indication for the administrator to review the content of the page. The other issue is accessibility and how many people use this platform except for the state of Miami which have 47,567 followers most of them have less than 7000 followers like the state of Chicago, Minneapolis, New York and Seattle. Some states like Denver and Dallas have less than 500 followers. The survey can be a basic point for the embassies to look after their respective pages and make a reform to be effective, efficient and contribute to the economy of the country.