To People of The World:
Massive water depletion and inequitable access to water are the most pressing environmental and human rights issues of our time. The only possibility of a water secure future lies in the twin foundations of conservation on one hand and water justice on the other. We need to build a movement now that declares that water belongs to the earth and all species and is a fundamental human right. This means that water must not be appropriated for profit or sold or traded on the open market.
One essential and missing step to a water-secure world is a binding United Nations Convention on the Right to Water.
The omission of water from both the original UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, while understandable (who could imagine a lack of clean water back then), is a problem that has allowed the decision-making power over water to shift from the United Nations and governments to transnational water corporations and global trade and finance institutions, creating a dynamic for the rapid privatization of the world’s dwindling water supplies.
The process within the UN to a more binding legal framework has already begun, and has been adopted in several key non-legally binding resolutions and declarations. In 2002, ECOSOC adopted “General Comment No. 15” which calls for water to be treated as a cultural and social, rather than an economic good, and rejects the commodification of the world’s water. The adoption of this Comment is a key step in the march toward a binding legal UN framework.
The right to water is an idea whose time has come. It is needed as a consensus-forming framework for governments as well as a powerful tool for grass roots groups fighting for access to clean water.
It builds upon the October, 2004 victory in Uruguay, when citizens of that country became the first people in the world to vote on the right to water and passed a constitutional amend-ment ensuring them clean, safe water on a not for-profit basis. The Uruguay referendum was the result of two-year grass roots fight led by a network called the “National Commission for the Defence of Water and Life” and became a catalyst in the global civil society fight for the right to water.
From the slums of Buenos Aires, the townships of South Africa, the rural villages of India, to the rich farming communities of New England, and the frozen northern communities of Canada, a powerful new movement has been unleashed and will not be stopped. “Water for life not for profit” is our rallying cry.
With the help of this movement, water will be nature’s gift to humanity to show us the ways of peace.
