Small capacity and big responsibilities: financial and legal implications of a human right to water for developing countries.

As a cholera epidemic sweeps across Zimbabwe, and as climate change models predict increasing droughts across parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the urgency of the need for access to clean water in southern Africa has re-emerged in the media.1 A right to water, internationally recognized through General Comment 15 of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESC Committee), takes on particular immediacy in light of these outbreaks; however, while the recognition of this right internationally and by some states is no doubt a positive development, the implications of its implementation are less well-defined, particularly in many developing countries, including those that have entrenched the general right into their domestic legislation