CORRECTION: Unsafe Water a Correctible Injustice McCullough Tells Congressional Panel

["Lesley Crosson" <lcrosson@churchworldservice.org>]

Editors: This resend adds the final paragraphs omitted from the the
original release, beginning with paragraph 11.

CWS’s McCullough to human rights hearing: lack of safe water for all
a correctible injustice

WASHINGTON - Thursday,  March 3, 2011 -- 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 proposed, 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, U.N. 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
U.N.'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 U.N.: 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 focus on access to clean water and sanitation 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 formation 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 bio-sand 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.

 * Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, United Nations,
“The Human Right to Water and Sanitation - Frequently Asked
Questions,”

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/water/iexpert/docs/watersant.pdf 


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