Except for Democracy Now!, one is hard-pressed to find any U.S. media that took note of the declaration by the United Nations on Wednesday that access to clean water is a basic human right. -- The historic event took place in the U.N. General Assembly, where "[a]fter more than 15 years of contentious debate on the issue, 122 countries voted in favor of a compromise Bolivian resolution enshrining the right, while the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, and 37 other nations abstained," AFP reported.[1] -- "The non-binding text 'declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life,'" Gerard Aziakou said. -- The resolution also "expresses deep concern that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that more 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation." -- Maud Barlow, coauthor of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water (2002; rev. ed. 2004) and for many years a leading proponent of water as a human right, said: "This is a historic day for the world, a big step in the right direction." -- Beirut's Daily Star noted that governments around the world "are grappling with the dual pressure of rising demand and falling water availability."[2] -- Lebanon, for example, "could run out of ground water supplies by 2015 if current trends are not reversed," Simona Sikimic said. -- Deutsche Welle said that "Although the decision does not make the right to water legally enforceable, it is symbolically important and places more political obligation on national governments."[3] -- BBC News reported that "Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Botswana were among the countries which abstained from voting. China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, and Brazil were among those supporting the resolution." -- Abstaining countries used the pretext that the resolution might undermine a U.N. Human Rights Council attempt in Geneva to build a consensus on water rights. -- But the real reason the neoliberal enthusiasts and their flunkies oppose the right is that they wish to commodify water and turn it over to large corporations. -- Maud Barlow told Amy Goodman that the countries voting against the historic resolution were "the usual gang. It was the United States and Canada, the European -- not the European Union -- the United Kingdom -- some of the European countries voted to abstain; some were wonderful -- Australia, New Zealand. So it was all of the Anglophone, neoliberal, you know, bought into this whole agenda that everything is to be commodified, countries who are able to continue to supply clean water to their citizens, which makes it doubly appalling that they would deny the right to water to the billions of people who are suffering right now. They used procedural language about this and that. There’s another process in Geneva with the Human Rights Council, which we support, and they used the excuse that we have to wait for that. But that’s a long-term process, and it could or could not end in something very specific. So they just cut through it. A bunch of brave countries from the Global South said, 'We can’t wait. We need this now.' And it’s not a surprise that it came from Bolivia, because, remember, Bolivia is suffering double whammy with a, you know, dearth of water, dearth of clean water, but also melting glaciers from climate change." ...
1.
U.N. DECLARES ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER A HUMAN RIGHT
By Gerard Aziakou
Agence France-Presse
July 28, 2010
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gFw3sC1VZUGBBXghGSeA-vRwYQoA
UNITED NATIONS -- The UN General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, a move hailed by water advocates as a momentous step toward a future treaty.
After more than 15 years of contentious debate on the issue, 122 countries voted in favor of a compromise Bolivian resolution enshrining the right, while the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and 37 other nations abstained.
The non-binding text "declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life."
It expresses deep concern that 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and that more 2.6 billion do not have access to basic sanitation.
It notes that roughly two million people die every year from diseases caused by unsafe water and sanitation, most of them small children.
And it points to the pledge made by world leaders in 2000 as part of the poverty-reduction Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to reduce by half, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation.
The resolution urges states and international organizations to provide financial and technological assistance to help developing countries "scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible, and affordable water and sanitation for all."
"This is a historic day for the world, a big step in the right direction" toward the distant goal of a water treaty, Canada's leading water activist Maude Barlow told AFP.
"It is going to mean a huge amount to our movement around the world, to local community groups fighting for water rights, water justice against governments, corporations which are not respecting their rights."
Barlow, a former senior adviser to the U.N. General Assembly on the water issue, said some wealthy countries abstained out of fear "that they are going to be asked to pay the price tag" or that the resolution would give "tools to their own people to use against them."
She welcomed the fact that major countries such as China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain, and Brazil backed the resolution.
Of her country's abstention, she said: "We are terribly disappointed."
She said Canada's conservative government wants the right to sell water.
"They know that if they say it is a human right it will be a contradiction to want to turn it into a commodity," she added.
The resolution also welcomes the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council's request that Portugal's Catarina de Albuquerque, the U.N. Independent Expert on human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water, report annually to the General Assembly as well.
De Albuquerque's report is to focus on the key challenges to achieving the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation, as well as on progress towards the relevant MDGs.
Germany's U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig also hailed the resolution, although he said he would have preferred language with "a clearer message on the primary responsibility of states to ensure the realization of human rights for all those living under their jurisdiction."
And he disagreed with those member states that voiced concern about the impact of the resolution on the Geneva process led by de Albuquerque.
"We see the resolution as a complement to the ongoing process on water and sanitation in Geneva," he noted.
2.
U.N. VOTE DECLARES ACCESS TO WATER A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT
By Simon Sikimic
Daily Star (Beirut)
July 30, 2010
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=117621#axzz0v7lJbjhP
BEIRUT -- Access to clean water and sanitation were declared fundamental human rights Wednesday in a landmark vote by the U.N. General Assembly.
The passage of the nonbinding resolution which calls water “a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights” is supposed to have more than just symbolic significance for governments which are grappling with the dual pressure of rising demand and falling water availability.
Lebanon -- which voted for the resolution -- has been slowly eroding its fresh water reserves for decades and experts fear that demand could increase by 80 percent in the next 15 year and that the country could run out of ground water supplies by 2015 if current trends are not reversed.
“Issuing a nonbinding resolution does not have a direct legal obligation on countries [which are] party to the U.N.,” said Darine al-Hage, executive director of Lebanese NGO Alef: Act for Human Rights. “However, such resolutions usually could develop into being a source of international law and could eventually generate drafting-related conventions to be discussed within the U.N. country members, which applies to Lebanon as a state party.”
The resolution, which advocates the presentation of annual reports on water access to the Security Council, also puts added pressure on the international community to fund water-management projects in poorer countries.
The resolution was adopted by a vote of 122-0 but 41 predominantly advanced nations, including the United States, abstained in the vote.
“The [U.S.] is deeply committed to finding solutions to our water challenges,” U.S. diplomat John Sammis told the General Assembly. “[But the resolution] describes a right to water and sanitation in a way that is not reflective of existing international law.”
Previous attempts to define access to clean water as a basic human right failed in 2008 after several developed countries again moved to have references to water stricken from the resolution.
Advocacy groups at the time attributed the failure to the consequences for bottled water exporters, which, it was feared, would be forced to sell their products to water poor countries at a reduced rate.
The new resolution, put forward by Bolivia, was advanced on the basis that inadequate access to water kills more people every year than any wars or conflict. Some 4.5 million people, including 1.5 million children under the age of 5 are thought to die every year due to insufficient access to clean drinking water.
3.
Human rights
WATER IS A HUMAN RIGHT, U.N. SAYS
By Andreas Zumach
** With a clear majority vote, the United Nations General Assembly has approved a resolution to make access to water a basic human right. **
Deutsche Welle
July 29, 2010
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5848799,00.html
Access to clean drinking water is now an official basic human right -- just like the right to food and the right to live without torture and racial discrimination. The resolution was approved late yesterday by the United Nations General Assembly without opposition.
Although the decision does not make the right to water legally enforceable, it is symbolically important and places more political obligation on national governments. The resolution highlights how urgent the issue of water shortage is for a growing portion of the world's population.
GRIM STATISTICS
According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 884 million people around the globe have no access to clean, drinkable water. Almost 2.5 billion people have no access to toilets and other sanitation facilities. Every year, more than two million people die due to a lack of drinking water and diseases caused by consuming polluted water.
"Diarrhea is the second most important cause of the death of children below the age of five," said Pablo Solon, Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations. "The lack of access to drinking water kills more children than AIDS, malaria, and measles combined."
WATER SHORTAGES AND DESERTIFICATION ON THE RISE
Water shortages and the desertification of agricultural regions used to be almost exclusively Africa and Asia's problem -- but now Europe is facing this problem too. In southern Spain, the desert expands by one kilometer northwards each year.
Meanwhile, water shortages are the cause of an increasing amount of domestic and international conflicts all around the world, such as between Israel and Palestine and in India and Pakistan. The problem is made even worse by privatization of water supplies driven by large food companies, which usually leads to higher water costs for consumers.
According to Maude Barlow, founder of the Canadian-based Blue Planet Project, people could not have predicted all these problems when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the U.N. in 1948. But she also believes that the increasing shortage of clean water is the worst human rights violation that exists. Her Blue Planet Project advocates the protection and the fair sharing of global water resources, and two years ago it initiated a campaign for a U.N. resolution on the right to water.
GERMANY VOTES IN FAVOR
Supported by 33 countries, it was Bolivia that finally presented the U.N. General Assembly with a specific proposal for the resolution. This week, 122 of the 163 U.N. member states present voted for its approval. The remaining 41 countries -- almost exclusively from the industrialized north -- abstained from the vote.
In particular the United States, Canada, and Great Britain attempted to prevent the vote for the resolution. However, the position of the world's wealthy northern countries was not as one-sided as it has been on similar topics in the past. Germany voted in favor of the resolution, and its representative Peter Wittig has distanced himself from the negative stance of the United States and other countries.
"Germany is committed to the realization of the millennium development goals, including that of reducing by half by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation," Wittig said.
"We consider access to safe drinking water and sanitation as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, recognized in Article 11 of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights."
4.
U.N. DECLARES CLEAN WATER A 'FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN RIGHT'
BBC News
July 28, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10797988
The U.N. has declared that access to clean water and sanitation is a fundamental human right.
About 1.5m children under five die each year from water and sanitation-related diseases.
The resolution was passed with 122 nations in favor, none against and 41 abstentions.
Abstaining countries said the resolution could undermine a process in the U.N.'s Human Rights Council in Geneva to build a consensus on water rights.
The text of the resolution said that 884m people have no access to safe drinking water and more than 2.6bn lack access to basic sanitation.
It "declares the right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of the right to life".
It urges the international community to "scale up efforts to provide safe, clean, accessible and affordable water and sanitation for all."
Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and Botswana were among the countries which abstained from voting.
China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain and Brazil were among those supporting the resolution.
Portuguese lawyer Catarina de Albuquerque is due to report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next year on countries' obligations related to water and sanitation.
U.S. delegate John Sammis said the resolution "falls far short of enjoying the unanimous support of member states and may even undermine the work underway in Geneva."
Some countries said the resolution did not clearly define the scope of the new human right and the obligations it entailed, says the BBC's Barbara Plett, at the U.N. in New York.
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