We want the Human Right to Water and we want it now!
Call for an European wide mobilization for water, 22-24 March 2015
The European Water Movement has been claiming for years that access to water and sanitation is a human right, as confirmed by the UN in 2010. The movement was an integral part of the civil society coalition that managed to foster enough support and attention to make the voice of almost two million people heard at the European Union level. A year has passed since the so called 'positive' response from the European Commission to the first European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) and we are still waiting for concrete action.
The European Commission has ignored the demands of European citizenship, and continues its water commodification and privatization agenda. All of this happening with the complicity of big water corporations, as shown in the 4th European Water Conference organized on 23 and 24 March in Brussels, where citizens or the promoters of the ECI are not invited. The crisis has clearly exposed that the European Commission's actions, through the Troika and imposing austerity measures, is in conflict with European citizens, who are mobilized to defend water as a commons whose access must be guaranteed as a human right through a participatory process, that is, public management.
The European Water Movement will mobilize the 23rd and 24th of March in Brussels, with people from all over Europe. To remind the European Commission that they should work for their citizens, not for corporations. And to engage into a dialogue with MEPs who are preparing a resolution in defense of the human right to water and the commons.
We ask the European Union and Member States to make access to water and sanitation a human right, to stop promoting privatization and liberalization and an unambigous exclusion of water and sanitation services in any trade agreement (TTIP, CETA, TISA and others).
Organizing meetings or debates, and making proposals is not enough to change the balance of power that block water to be a commons. We must fight and mobilize as our Greek and Irish fellows have done in their recent fight against water privatization and commodification.
We do, therefore, appeal to all groups, NGOs and movements to participate and get involved in the March 22-24 mobilization, in their communities and to come to Brussels, to make our demands heard in its streets. And to mobilize also, with events and actions for the human right to water throughout Europe in the week before to March 23
Acces to water is a human right, water is not a commodity!