UN seeks control of world's drinking water, warn critics

The United Nations General Assembly is considering a historic draft resolution recognizing the human right to "safe and clean drinking water and sanitation" initiated by the Bolivian government. Other member states have been consulted on the resolution and the final text is expected to be presented to the President of the General Assembly.

In a letter sent to all UN Ambassadors and permanent missions, global water advocate and Blue Planet Project founder Maude Barlow urges a decisive and swift passage of the resolution. 

"This would be one of the most important things the UN has done since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights," says Barlow, who chairs the boards of the Council of Canadians and Washington-based Food and Water Watch. In 2008/2009, Barlow served as Senior Advisor on Water to the 63rd President of the UN General Assembly.

"It's time politics caught up with reality," says Barlow, noting that nearly two billion people live in water-stressed areas of the world and three billion have no running water within a kilometre of their homes. "It's time states finally recognize water as essential to life and a fundamental human right."

But this latest moved -- backed by U.S. progressives -- is viewed as disturbing by conservative activists such as political strategist Mike Baker.

"This is the Mother of all power-grabs on a global level and will surely be detrimental to U.S. sovereignty. And the news media are totally ignoring what should be the biggest news story of the year," said Baker.

Baker believes one of the most diabolical organizations in controlling the world's resources, including water, is the much-touted Clinton Global Initiative, the brainchild of former President Bill Clinton, an unabashed Internationalist.

Then there’s Obama’s science “czar,” John Holrdren, who was also an attendee at Clinton's recent conference. Shortly after his confirmation as director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, it was revealed that Holdren was once a proponent of compulsory abortions and a “Planetary Regime”. And in 1977, he co-authored a book that proposed the use of totalitarian regimes to curb population growth and protect the environment including the planet's water supply.

Other key figures from the days of the Clinton administration were also at the annual meeting including National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin. 

Meanwhile, in an address before the UN General Assembly, President Barack Obama Wednesday outlined the Administration's new global development policy.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Department of State and Foreign Operations, which handles the Senate's work in crafting the annual State Department and foreign assistance appropriations bill said of Obama's speech, "The United States has vital national security, economic, and humanitarian interests around the world, but the ways we use our limited budget to protect those interests are too often poorly conceived, poorly coordinated, and fail to produce the intended outcomes. President Obama's new Global Development Policy tackles these issues head on, recognizing that the answer is not shrinking our role as a world leader but working to build the capacity of developing countries to achieve lasting progress against poverty, conflict, environmental degradation and other major threats to global security. I hope the Congress and the Administration will join together to make these long overdue reforms."

Barlow and Blue Planet Project Organizer, Anil Naidoo, recently briefed the G77 and China on the right to water and along with an international team of water activists met with representatives of 25 countries last week to advance the issue. Naidoo will be in New York next week meeting with UN member states to build additional support for the right to water resolution.

"International and local community groups fighting for water justice have long been calling for leadership from the UN in clearly recognizing that water and sanitation are human rights," says Naidoo. "As this moves forward we are demanding that the language of the resolution remain strong and leave no doubt that water and sanitation are human rights."

"When the 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights was written, no one could foresee a day when water would be a contested area. But in 2010, it is not an exaggeration to say that the lack of access to clean water is the greatest human rights violation in the world," adds Barlow in the letter.
 

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