Take Action to Guarantee the Human Right to Water
An unusual event is taking place next Friday, 2/25, at 3 p.m. at the Church on the Hill on Boston's Beacon Hill. United Nations Independent Expert on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque will be taking testimony on water inequality in Boston as it impacts immigrants, people of color and working class people. The United States government has reluctantly agreed to admit the UN expert to "collect first hand information about the Government’s efforts to ensure that the rights to safe drinking water and sanitation are guaranteed in its territory, and the extent to which these rights are promoted through official development aid." Now, the US is not in the habit of admitting independent monitors of any kind on official missions to poke around for human rights violations or inspect weapons or any of the many things American experts are in the habit of doing in countries around the globe. But local sponsors Massachusetts Global Action and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and allies around the country, are hoping that the fact that the government is allowing de Albuquerque to gather data here may be a step on the road to the Obama administration backing the Human Right to Water by signing international treaties and resolutions to that effect - which it has thus far abstained from doing.
Doing so would mean that the US recognizes that many communities within our borders lack access to clean water and good sanitation - joining over 2.5 billion people around the world in that sad state of affairs - and that it will take real steps to change that situation over the next few years. This move could not come at a more critical time. Climate scientists working on projecting the effects of global warming are expecting serious water shortages to strike the US in the decades to come. Massachusetts - while not expected to experience the worst effects - is already water stressed, and will likely see our annual rainfall decrease by several percent quite soon. If our society doesn't guarantee the right to water and continues to allow inroads to be made on control of our still-largely-public water systems by multi-national water corporations, we could see the already worsening problem of water-shutoffs at people's homes increase dramatically. And even start to see waves of illness and death from lack of clean water.
According to a UN press release, "Ms. de Albuquerque will meet with Government officials, representatives of Congress, water and wastewater operators, and representatives from civil society and academia. Besides official Government meetings in the capital, Washington, DC, she will also visit Boston, California and Maryland. Her findings and recommendations will be presented in a report to the Human Rights Council."
Sounds like a good thing from this corner. Open Media Boston therefore recommends that anyone with a couple of hours to spare should show up at the event next Friday. And if you've had a hard time keeping access to clean water and decent sanitation in your community, plan to bring some testimony along to present to the independent expert.
Unlike the back-pedalling on many of the critical issues that were identified in the UN's Millennium Goals of over a decade ago, it looks like there's the possibility of getting agreements with teeth that will go a long way towards stopping future profiteering and even wars over that most vital of resources … water. If scientists are right, and water shortages loom across most of the habitable areas of our planet, this might prove to be the most critical set of agreements in human history.
For more information, on the Human Right to Water and how to further action to make it happen check out these resources
http://www.blueplanetproject.net/
http://www.righttowater.info/
Jason Pramas is Editor/Publisher of Open Media Boston.
Full disclosure: Pramas is a former founder, director, and board member of Massachusetts Global Action.
