Kevin McAdam: The Human Right to Water—Market Allocations and Subsistence in a World of Scarcity
The following abstract was adapted from Kevin McAdam's full-length paper, which was submitted to The Forum on Education Abroad.
Kevin McAdam’s interest in global water issues began in the summer of 2001, after his freshman year in college, when he spent several weeks in Kenya working on an irrigation project in the northern part of the country. Having just decided to major in International Studies, he felt there would be no better introduction than the practical experience of volunteering abroad. “Little did I know that my time in Kenya would provide the cornerstone upon which I would build my academic career,” he writes.
Kevin went to Kenya with several students from Boston College to help a small Turkanan community transition from traditional nomadism to self-sustained agriculturalism. He witnessed many of the hardships of life in a developing country, but he was particularly drawn to the problems associated with acute water scarcity.
Kevin revisited the topic of water scarcity during his junior year, when he participated in Kent State University’s semester-long course in International Relations in Geneva, Switzerland. At that time he was interning at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) and taking classes on International Trade and International Organizations from leading experts in those fields. His internship converged with several topics he was studying, and he became especially interested in issues surrounding the protection of human rights and the formulation of international law in the context of development. Consequently, he co-authored a term paper with two of his classmates on “The Right to Development.” He was able to research the topic at the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which was taking place while he was in Geneva, as well as at the Human Rights Library of Geneva´s Graduate Institute of International Studies.
Around the time he was choosing his topic, Kevin was writing several news pieces on global water issues for one of ICTSD’s trade-related publications. The U.N.’s World Water Day, March 22, had just taken place; the Third World Water Forum had just concluded in Japan; and many academic works were being published in light of a previous declaration stating 2003 to be the International Year of Fresh Water. Needless to say, he focused his section of the paper on water scarcity within the framework of the right to development, and he concentrated specifically on multinational corporate ownership of water resources and the World Trade Organization’s trade-related role in water availability.
Kevin continued researching and writing over the summer of 2003 and the next academic year. He knew that he wanted to write his senior thesis on global water scarcity, but he wanted to do so from a human rights perspective. “In the paper I wrote in Geneva,” he says, “I had to access the human rights dimension of water scarcity through the right to development, implying a human right to water by the integral role water plays in the process of development. For my senior thesis, however, my goal was to establish water as a human right.”
Kevin McAdam graduated from Boston College in May 2004 with a major in International Studies. He went on to do a year-long Poverty and Development Studies program at La Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. This program runs in conjunction with La Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, where he completed a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholarship. After finishing, he planned to return to the U.S. for law school, with the goal of practicing law in the context of international development.