'Water As Human Right' Campaign Gets Global Protestant Backing

By Stephen Brown
Religion News Service

(RNS/ENInews) Church-backed campaigners say they have received a boost from a global body representing 80 million Protestants that has called access to water a basic human right.

"Preserving the world's water resources, and securing access to water for all, is one of the greatest challenges we face," Maike Gorsboth, the Geneva-based coordinator of the secretariat of the Ecumenical Water Network told ENInews.

Gorsboth was speaking after the World Communion of Reformed Churches at its founding meeting last month (June) in Grand Rapids, Mich., urged its churches to support and adopt a declaration on "Water as a Human Right and a Public Good."

The declaration, drawn up by Swiss and Brazilian churches, urges that "the human right to water be recognized at the local and international level in the same way as the right to adequate food."

It says nations should guarantee everyone access to drinking water, fixing an affordable price, and involve local authorities and communities in decisions on the use of water resources.

"Water is a pressing global concern related to life, dignity, peace and justice," said Gorsboth.

"Hopefully, the WCRC's recognition of the ecumenical declaration will further strengthen churches' commitment to this issue."

With some 230 churches in 108 countries, the new Reformed body was formed as a merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council.

The Ecumenical Water Network was formed by Christian agencies and movements to raise the awareness of churches about the urgency of issues linked to water.

Comments

[Dillon Burroughs]

12:07 PM on 07/13/2010

Great post. Excited to see this making progress.

[TanzaniaTeacher]

06:15 PM on 07/08/2010

I'm encouraged by the growing understanding of the right to potable water for all. I have lived in a refugee camp, with children, lots of children, on my doorstep everyday begging for water to drink. And where the UNHCR, in their infinite wisdom, built a pay, public latrine uphill from one of the only water sources in the camp. The organization I was working for built one well and was in the process of building another while I was there as well as working on santitation programs to limit the problems with pollution to what little potable water there was.

[Aikaterina]

01:33 PM on 07/07/2010

Water rights are in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps this group should take their argument to BP (and other corporate polluters), who've ruining the water supplies in the marshes, wetlands of the Gulf, and devastating the plant-wildlife in the region. Maybe they'd like to address this issue with Israel, that diverts fresh water to illegal Jewish settlements, while depriving Palestinian areas of any (or what they get is contaminated run-off filled with sewage).

If we deem access to fresh, clean water a basic human right, would not also access to affordable basic medical care also be a fundamental right (rid of privatized, profit-drive, dysfunctional, over-priced insurers-pharmaceuticals) as well? What about nutrition-food and clean air also?

Granted, adequate supplies of fresh water, food, medical care and air to breathe are basic necessities for survival. The problem is, how to address it in a viable, equitable fashion to make those needs available to those needing them most.

[Tim Ostrander]

02:53 PM on 07/07/2010

Fanned and favorited for that! Well said!

[missBea]

12:25 AM on 07/09/2010

True! Thank you for the eloquent post.

[michelesda]

09:35 AM on 07/07/2010

Water as a human right? I don't think so! By that kind of thinking, if I decide I want to live in the middle of a desert, then my government has an obligation to protect my water right by running a water line out to me. To exist, water rights, like any other kind of right, need to be guaranteed by some sort of government power. If everybody in the world has water rights, then, what does that mean? Does it mean a world government, to protect and enforce every citizen of the world's water rights? Jeez, talk about a pandora's box...

[JShankel]

05:55 PM on 07/07/2010

Yeah, it's only a pandora's box if you're in the habit of grossly oversimplifying and willfully misinterpreting what is being said.

No one said that the right to water equates to the guarantee that a government agency will deliver you water wherever you decide to move.

Do you really think that's what's going on in the world? Get informed about water access. This isn't a bunch of hippies just wandering into the Gobi and expecting the One World Government to build them a pipeline.

We're talking about massive populations of people who are displaced from their native homes by war or famine, who are held in practical bondage in places like Somalia and Darfur and whose access to clean water is routinely sabotaged by corrupt government and business interests.

This article is about the reality of the actual real world where impoverished people are actually made to drink unclean water and who routinely suffer from water-related diseases like malaria and bilharzia not because they're too lazy to find a clean municipal water supply like you and I enjoy but because they've essentially been thrown onto a trash heap to die.

It's not about some slippery slope libertarian fantasy that isn't actually happening anywhere. There are no water welfare queens. Don't worry. No one is coming for your garden hose.

[NWBrunette]

07:51 PM on 07/07/2010

Exactly. Well said.

[michelesda]

08:51 PM on 07/07/2010

I'm quite aware of the worldwide water problem. I think the mistake here was probably in the central concept, the notion of defining the problem in terms of a "human right," in an article that did not then go on to explain exactly what was meant by that.

[SilentSolidarity]

01:39 AM on 07/08/2010

Well yeah. That's the American attitude. Now listen to what the rest of the planet has to say about it. It is not that complicated. People should always have access to clean water, no privatization of any bodies of water by anyone. Water is a common good like air and everyone has the right to have enough. If you don't believe that access to water is a right then try to live three days without it.

[michelesda]

05:02 AM on 07/08/2010

Hmm; try farming without a farm pond. By your standards, it's as much as to say a farmer doesn't own the water in his farm pond, and would have no grounds to stop somebody else from digging a channel across his land to divert that water to somewhere else. Has anybody thought this through?

[f0rTyLeGz]

12:34 AM on 07/07/2010

Well Im glad that is settled!