[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19785-19786]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      GIVING THE GIFT OF WATER TO THE NEEDIEST THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker and Members of the House, I rise to point 
out that a very important consideration is about to take place in the 
next 3 days dealing with the Senator Paul Simon Water for the World 
Act. Its main sponsor is the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer). It 
has 97 cosponsors. And I want to commend the bipartisan spirit in which 
this bill has been put forward, because we have no less than one, two, 
three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten Members of the House 
that belong to the minority that are cosponsors. And in the other body, 
we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight Members of that 
distinguished body who are in the minority there, plus two Independent 
Senators that have joined us.
  And why? Because we've been working on this question of water for the 
continent of Africa and the states and the millions of people there 
suffering there and in Haiti. And we have a very rare opportunity in 
these next several days. The other body has passed the measure, and I 
stand before the House tonight to urge that it be taken up here as soon 
as possible.
  As we gather for the holiday season, we are giving thanks for family 
and friends, but what may be unconsidered and unmentioned is 
appreciation for access to the water and adequate sanitation, something 
that's taken for granted in our great country.
  And so I rise to remind us that there are 884 million people across 
the planet who went without access to clean water this year, and 2.5 
billion men, women, and many, many children who went without adequate 
sanitation. Without access to these basic building blocks, many of the 
people of undeveloped nations will likely have been left without the 
ability to work because of health problems that hamper productivity and 
discourage economic investment.
  The countries of the world, including our great Nation, have come 
together to say that we can do better. And so a set of shared goals, 
entitled the Millennium Development Goals, have set specific targets 
relating to increasing access to water and sanitation by 2015. With 
these goals, we and the international community have pledged to halve, 
by 2015, to cut in half, the proportion of people who are unable to 
reach or afford or come into possession of safe drinking water. Think 
of it. And many of these are children. That's the worst part of it all.
  And as this Congress draws to a close, we have a sensitive 
opportunity to make good on that promise. Important legislation, 
entitled the Water for the World Act, H.R. 2035, has already passed in 
the other body. We need it here. And, if enacted, this bill could help 
50 million people over the next 6 years.
  Please join me in helping move this legislation across the finish 
line and provide millions of our fellow world citizens with the gift of 
water.

     In Historic Vote, UN Declares Water a Fundamental Human Right

       Juan Gonzalez: The United Nations General Assembly has 
     declared for the first time that access to clean water and 
     sanitation is a fundamental human right. In an historic vote 
     Wednesday, 122 countries supported the resolution, and over 
     forty countries abstained from voting, including the United 
     States, Canada and several European and other industrialized 
     countries. There were no votes against the resolution.
       Nearly one billion people lack clean drinking water, and 
     over two-and-a-half billion do not have basic sanitation.
       Bolivia's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, 
     Pablo Solon, introduced the resolution at the General 
     Assembly Wednesday.
       Pablo Solon: [translated] At the global level, 
     approximately one out of every eight people do not have 
     drinking water. In just one day, more than 200 million hours 
     of the time used by women is spent collecting and 
     transporting water for their homes. The lack of sanitation is 
     even worse, because it affects 2.6 billion people, which 
     represents 40 percent of the global population. According to 
     the report of the World Health Organization and of UNICEF of 
     2009, which is titled ``Diarrhoea: Why Children Are [Still] 
     Dying and What We Can Do,'' every day 24,000 children die in 
     developing countries due to causes that can be prevented, 
     such as diarrhea, which is caused by contaminated water. This 
     means that a child dies every three-and-a- half seconds. One, 
     two, three. As they say in my village, the time is now.
       Amy Goodman: Bolivia's ambassador to the United Nations, 
     Pablo Solon, urging support for the resolution Bolivia 
     introduced recognizing access to clean water and sanitation 
     as a fundamental human right.
       For more on this historic vote, we're joined now here in 
     New York by longtime water justice advocate Maude Barlow. 
     She's the chair of the Council of Canadians, co-founder of 
     the Blue Planet Project and board chair of Food and Water 
     Watch. Last year she served as senior adviser on water to the 
     President of the United Nations General Assembly.
       Welcome to Democracy Now!
       Maude Barlow: So glad to be here.
       Amy Goodman: Talk about the significance of this. If you 
     asked people in this country, they would have no idea this 
     has passed.
       Maude Barlow: I know, I know, which is why you matter, I 
     just have to say. This is very, very distressing to know 
     something this important happened and it's been blanketed. 
     There's no media here; it's just like it didn't happen. It's 
     had media in other places.
       There's no human--there has been on human right to water. 
     It wasn't included in the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. 
     And then, more recently, when people have realized that it 
     needed to happen, there were very powerful forces against 
     it--powerful countries, powerful corporate interests and so 
     on. But Ambassador Solon and a number of developing countries 
     decided that they were going to move this, countries from the 
     Global South, that they were going to move this through, and 
     they just tabled it a month ago, and yesterday, at the vote 
     at the United Nations, they won. Not one country had the guts 
     to stand against them, even though lots of them wanted to do 
     it.
       And basically, for the first time, the United Nations 
     General Assembly debated the right to water and sanitation--
     it's very important both were included--and acknowledged and 
     recognized the right of every human being on earth to water 
     and sanitation. And this matters because--as you know, 
     because we've talked so many times--we are running--a planet 
     running out of water. Brand new World Bank study says that 
     the demand is going to exceed supply by 40 percent in twenty 
     years. It's just a phenomenal statement. And the human 
     suffering behind that is just unbelievable. And what this did 
     as basically say that the United Nations has decided it's not 
     going to let huge populations leave them behind as this 
     crisis unfolds, that the new priority is to be given to these 
     populations without water and sanitation.
       Juan Gonzalez: And the countries that abstained, could you 
     talk about--did any of them talk about why they were not 
     voting ``yes,'' or did they just remain quiet?
       Maude Barlow: Oh, it was 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.
       Amy Goodman: Well, let's go back to Bolivia. I want to go 
     back to Bolivia's UN representative, Ambassador Pablo Solon, 
     at a speech he gave in Toronto, the event that you organized, 
     Maude, last month, shortly before the G20 meetings. He 
     outlined the need to support a UN declaration on the human 
     right to water, referencing the long struggle for water 
     rights in Bolivia, which successfully fought against 
     Bechtel's water privatization efforts ten years ago.
       Pablo Solon: In those days, I was a water warrior. Now I'm 
     a water warrior ambassador. We have to have water declared as 
     a human right in the UN. It is not possible to see that we 
     have declared in the UN food, the right to food, the right to 
     health, the right to education, the right to shelter, the 
     right to development, but not the right to water. And we all 
     know that without water, we can't live. So nobody can argue 
     that it's not a basic and fundamental and universal human 
     right. But even though, until now,

[[Page 19786]]

     it's not recognized as a human right. So, we have presented, 
     two weeks ago, a draft resolution so that this coming month, 
     in July, we expect to have a vote in the General Assembly of 
     the United Nations. And we want to see which countries are 
     going to vote against that resolution. We want to go to vote 
     to see which governments are going to say to the humanity 
     that water is not a human right.
       Amy Goodman: That was Bolivia's ambassador to the United 
     Nations, Pablo Solon, speaking in Toronto. Which nations are 
     not going to say that water is a human right? Well, you said 
     the United States didn't vote for this. Canada didn't, though 
     they didn't vote against. What is their rationale?
       Maude Barlow: Well, it depends on the country. The United 
     Kingdom says they ``don't want to pay for the toilets in 
     Africa.'' That's a direct quote from somebody who wouldn't be 
     quoted, from a senior diplomat in the government of Great 
     Britain, that was in--quoted in a Canadian paper.
       Canada hides behind the false statement that we might have 
     to share our water, sell our water to the United States, 
     which is nonsense. We're in way more danger from NAFTA, which 
     declares water to be a commodity.
       The United States, as you know, has not been supporting 
     rights regimes for decades now, so this is just a 
     continuation. And I have to tell you, listening to the 
     statement from the United States yesterday at the United 
     Nations, I wouldn't have thought there was any difference 
     between George Bush and Barack Obama's administrations. It 
     was haughty language. They scolded Bolivia. Bolivia came 
     under a lot of heat, a lot of insults yesterday from these 
     countries.
       New Zealand and Australia are both going private. Australia 
     has privatized its water totally, and basically it's now for 
     sale. And there's a big American investment firm that's 
     actually buying up water rights. It was supposed to be, 
     originally, just to get the farmers of the big farm 
     conglomerates to share, to trade, but now it's all gone 
     private and international, so they're hardly going to support 
     something that says that water, you know, is a human right, 
     when they've commodified it and said it's a market commodity.
       So, really, what you're seeing is a split between those 
     countries that see water as a public trust, although that 
     wasn't in the language of the legislation, but that see water 
     as a public trust and a human right and that should belong to 
     all, as opposed to those who are going to move to a market 
     model. And I think that's the truth behind what happened.
       And it's very important for you to know that they did not 
     allow the inclusion of the words ``access to,'' and that was 
     one of the demands. I think some of those countries would 
     have said yes to something that said ``access to.'' And it's 
     very important. It's not semantic, because if you say you 
     have access to it, then all the country--all the government 
     has to do is provide you access. Then they can charge you, or 
     they can have a private company come in and deliver it and 
     charge you. And if you can't afford it, they provided you 
     access, it's not their fault if you can't pay it. So it's 
     very important that Bolivia and the other sponsoring 
     countries held on to the language of the human right to 
     drinking water and sanitation. They wouldn't drop sanitation. 
     They wouldn't add the words ``access to.'' And those were the 
     sticking points.
       Juan Gonzalez: And in practical terms, what will be the 
     impact of this resolution on those efforts to continue to 
     commodify or privatize water supplies in countries around the 
     world, especially in the third world?
       Maude Barlow: It's a fight we're in. You know, I'm not 
     going to say that suddenly everything is going to be fine 
     tomorrow or today, today being the day after the vote, that 
     anybody woke up in a different situation today, anybody had 
     more water today than they did yesterday, or more access to 
     sanitation.
       What it is is a moral statement, a guiding principle, of 
     the countries of the world--and basically the UN is the 
     closest thing we have to a global parliament--that they have 
     taken a step in a direction of saying that water is a human 
     right and a public trust and that no one should be dying for 
     lack of water, and they shouldn't have to watch their 
     children die a horrible death for lack of water because they 
     cannot pay. And that was a statement that has taken us years 
     and years to get the UN--they hadn't even debated the water 
     issue. They hadn't even debated it in the past. They've done 
     all this work on climate and absolutely no work on water. So 
     it was a huge step forward to establishing some principles 
     that we need if we are to avoid the crisis that I honestly 
     see coming, that I think is going to be worse than anybody 
     can imagine, in terms of the suffering.

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