The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and governing the sector, including policy formulation. Within the Ministry, the Department of Public Health Engineering is responsible for water and sanitation services in all parts of the country, except for urban areas, which are covered by the water supply and sewerage authorities (notably in Dhaka, Khulna and Chittagong). Other ministries with competencies in the areas of water and sanitation include those of education, health and family welfare; water resources; environment and forests; finance; and the Planning Commission. Recently on 21 May 2012, the cabinet approved in principle the draft of a new law, titled 'The Bangladesh Water Act, 2012', with a provision for punishment of maximum 5 years in jail or a fine of Tk 50 lakh for its violation. The approval was given at the regular weekly meeting of the cabinet held at the Bangladesh Secretariat with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the chair. Briefing reporters after the meeting, Cabinet Division Secretary M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said that the cabinet approved the proposed law to give a legal framework to the existing National Water Policy. He said the proposed law incorporated the overall aspects of water management, including distribution of water, rights of water, payment for water and protection of rivers. 2.3 Right to Health The constitution of Bangladesh mandates that “it shall be a fundamental responsibility of the state to attain, through planned economic growth, a constant increase of productive forces and a steady improvement in the material and cultural standard of living of the people with a view to serving its citizens: a) the provisioning of basic necessities of life, including food, clothing, shelter, education and medicine.” The government of Bangladesh, since independence, has been investing substantially in the strengthening of health and family planning services in the country, giving special allocation to the population that resides in the rural areas. The main thrust of the health programs has been the provision of primary health care (PHC) services which has been recognized as a key approach to attain “Health for All by the year 2000.” 30 Bangladesh did not have a coherent health policy for the first three decades after independence in 1971. In the absence of a formal health policy, all health-related planning and programming was guided by the health sector components of successive Five Year Plans. The first National Health Policy of Bangladesh was approved by the Parliament in 2000, and the draft of a new policy has been under discussion since 2009. While the policy documents provided broad directions for action, the practical programmatic operations in the health sector have been guided by two major strategies adopted in the recent past with a view to co-coordinating donor and government funding on health-related matters under the sectorwide approach viz. the Health and Population Sector Programs (HPSP) (1998-2003) and its successor the Health, Nutrition and Population Sector Programs (HNPSP) (2003-2010). The first National Health Policy, introduced in 2000 and imbued with the same philosophy as embodied in the HPSS of 1997, contained 15 goals, 10 policy principles and 32 strategies. The major goals were as follows: 1. Make basic health services accessible to all, particularly the poor; 2. Reduce the rate of maternal and child mortality as well as maternal and child malnutrition; 3. Ensure availability of doctors, nurses and medical equipment required to provide services at upazila and union levels; 4. Make health services accountable and cost-effective; 5. Increase the effectiveness and accessibility of the family planning programme, especially by the poor. The key policy principles adopted for the purpose of achieving these goals included the following: (1) primary health care services to all must be ensured, (2) equity in the provision of healthcare, (3) decentralisation of healthcare management, (4) stakeholder participation in planning and management, and (5) public-private partnership in the provision of healthcare. A draft policy was formulated in 2006 by the BNP government, which was revised in 2008 by the care-taker government, but the policy never materialized. The Awami League government that returned to power in 31