United Nations independent water expert Catarina de Albuquerque and CWS Executive Director & CEO John L. McCullough testified before the Human Rights Commission. Photo: Martin Shupack/CWS
WASHINGTON — In testimony before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in Washington this morning, the head of international humanitarian agency Church World Service cited the “extraordinary meaning and power of water” and described by contrast the lack of safe water and sanitation for one-eighth of the world’s people as “repugnant to our sense of justice and fairness in human society.”
CWS Executive Director and CEO the Rev. John L. McCullough joined Catarina de Albuquerque, United Nations Human Rights Council Independent Expert on the Issue of Human Rights Obligations Related to Access to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Dr. Aaron Salzberg, Special Coordinator for Water Resources, United States Department of State, and other water resource and sanitation experts as they presented challenges in addressing world water issues to the commission, including the role of U.S. foreign policy and U.S. funding.
The hearing explored the impact of recent UN resolutions declaring the right to safe drinking water and sanitation as a universal human right, the outlook for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), implementation of the U.S. Water for the Poor Law, and global challenges regarding access to safe water and sanitation now facing vulnerable people around the world.
Rep. James McGovern (D-MA), who co-chairs the Lantos Commission with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), said helping countries provide adequate food and water is not only the right thing to do, but is a national security issue for the U.S.
With massive U.S. budget cuts on the chopping block, McCullough and other panelists urged Congress to salvage budgets for safe water funding and other foreign assistance spending. McGovern said the House cuts would hurt provision for both water and food security.
Pressing the point of water as a human right, UN independent water expert de Albuquerque pointed to flaws in the existing MDG framework, saying it doesn’t reflect all of the core elements involved in the UN’s human right to water mandate, such as quality of water.
If people have a faucet and it turns on and water comes through, even if bad, it counts as MDG progress, she said. “Water quality is simply not being monitored globally.” She said a consistent approach is needed to ensure that all of the five core elements of the human right to water are being realized, as outlined by the UN: sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water.
A ‘correctible injustice’
As a faith leader and head of a disaster relief and development organization with a priority focus on clean water and sanitation access for all, CWS’s McCullough described the lack of safe water and sanitation for much of the world’s population as an affront to human rights, but said the crisis is an injustice that can be corrected and stressed the capacity of even the world’s poorest communities to develop and maintain their own sustainable clean water and sanitation resources.
He cited examples of CWS-supported “rights-based” water initiatives in communities, such as those in rural Cambodia that build sustainability by first inviting the forming of village water committees to promote community ownership and solidarity, empower women, and “foster a sense of water and sanitation as necessary for dignified human life.”
On that foundation, when technologies like simple, effective and inexpensive biosand water filters are introduced, along with the training to build and maintain them, communities generate a system that they can and are maintaining, McCullough said.
He said in those settings people assume responsibility, expand and derive benefits “that we often did not imagine. …The benefits compound.”
Currently 884 million people worldwide do not have access to safe water, 2.6 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation, and 1.4 million children die every year from water-borne diseases.
Along with de Albuquerque and McCullough, witnesses participating in the hearing included: Dr. Aaron Salzberg, Special Coordinator for Water Resources, U.S. Department of State. Rev. William Schulz, President and CEO, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Katherine Bliss, Director, Project on Global Water Policy, Global Health Policy Center, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and John Oldfield, Director, WASH Advocacy Initiative.
International World Water Day is March 22.
Complete text of witness testimonies available at:
Rev. John L. McCullough, Executive Director and CEO, Church World Service
Catarina de Albuquerque, UN Independent Expert on the right to water and sanitation
William F. Schulz, President and CEO, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
John Oldfield, Managing Director, WASH Advocacy Initiative
Related CWS Action Alert: Tell Congress not to cut humanitarian foreign aid