OTTAWA, March 22, 2004 – Gathering on Parliament Hill on World Water Day, four prominent Canadian NGO’s are questioning the Canadian government’s international position refusing to recognize water as a human right.

Leaders of Development and Peace, the Council of Canadians, Association Québécoise pour un Contrat Mondial de l’Eau, and the Polaris Institute are demanding that during the current Human Rights Commission meetings, in Geneva, Canada reverse its immoral position, which denies water is a human right.

“We believe that Canadians would be shocked to learn that we were the only country, of the 53 on the Human Rights Commission, that voted 'No' to recognizing this essential human right," said Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, citing Canada's actions at the UN Human Rights Commission in 2002 and 2003. "In the face of a global water crisis, it is outrageous that this government, in the name of all Canadians, could stand opposed to the Right to Water.”

“If Canada does not support the right to water, then how can Canada claim to support the right to health or the right to food in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?," says Anne-Marie Jackson of Development and Peace, the official international solidarity agency of the Canadian Catholic Church. "Water is a prerequisite to the realization of other human rights. Water is life. It is essential to human dignity.”

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.1 billion individuals lack access to a basic supply of clean water. Each day, nearly 6,000 children in developing countries die due to lack of clean water and sanitation. These deaths are not due to water scarcity. Rather they are a damning testimony to the lack of adequate efforts to develop appropriate water-delivery mechanisms. and to address pollution of water sources.

“For clean water to be accessible to the 1.1 billion who do not have it, governments have to respect their legal commitments as prescribed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to guarantee, at least and immediately, a minimum to everyone” says Sylvie Paquerôt of Association Québécoise pour un Contrat Mondial de l’Eau. “Every member state must apply the guidelines provided in the General Comment 15 on the Right to Water in each of their actions and decisions. For Canada this would include international cooperation and related Canadian domestic policy.”

"Today, for-profit corporations are taking over public water systems around the world, distributing water on the basis of the ‘ability to pay’, not as a ‘human right’,” says Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute. “In turn, this commodification of water is legally reinforced by trade regimes like NAFTA, the FTAA, and the General Agreement on Trade in Services. Access to water must not be based on peoples’ ability to pay, thereby threatening to condemn millions more to death. Water as a human right must be universally applied!”

During this past fall and winter, more than 165,000 Canadians from coast to coast signed a Development and Peace declaration which affirms that access to water is a human right.

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