NEWS
Monday, January 5, 2015 11
Detroit water
» continued from cover
weakest, the poorest and the most vulnerable.”
At the conclusion of their visit, the Special
Rapporteurs made a series of recommendations to
the city on how to best resolve the crisis. The chief
recommendation was that that city “restore water
connections to residents unable to pay and to vulnerable groups of people,” and to “stop further disconnections of water when residents are unable to
pay.” They also called on the city of Detroit and the
state of Michigan to implement a mandatory affordability threshold.
The UN experts acknowledged that they had
little power to force Detroit to implement their recommended changes, but that they do have leverage insofar as they can advocate on behalf of people
facing possible human rights violations. Detroit, in
its bankrupt state, has done little to respond to their
recommendations, with Mayor Mike Duggan’s chief
of staff, Alexis Wiley, saying without a hint of irony
that “At the end of the day, everybody’s gotta pay
their water bills.”
In July 2010, the UN General Assembly passed a
resolution on the human right to water and sanitation as part of the UN’s Millennium Development
Goals. Meera Karunananthan, an international
water campaigner for the Blue Planet Project, writes
that this resolution “was celebrated as a victory” and
added that “social movements saw the human right
to water and sanitation as a tool in the fight against
a global water crisis produced by inequality, social
exclusion and the abuse of the water commons.”
While water may be recognised as a human right,
Detroit is not alone in its fight to access safe and
affordable drinking water. Earlier in October, more
than 50,000 people marched in Dublin to voice
opposition to the country’s plan to begin charging
residents for water usage. Prior to the new monetized scheme, which is planned to take effect in
January 201 5, Ireland was the only country in
the OECD that did not charge residents for water
services.
The mounting pressure on countries to privatize their water services has also led to many citizens being unable to afford this basic human right.
In 1998, the International Monetary Fund approved
a $138 million loan for Bolivia with a condition of
the loan being that the country had to privatize the
national water agency. Two years later, residents
were stuck with water bills that were double or
triple what they had been paying under the national
scheme. In response, protestors in Cochabamba shut
down the city for four days.
In Sao Paolo, privatization coupled with the worst
drought that Brazil has seen in eight decades has
resulted in more than 60 percent of the city’s 40
million people being cut off from water. The disparate impact of the water shortages is clear, with
rural and poor communities being hit the hardest as
a result of the unofficial rationing system.
While the Detroit water shortages may be the
latest headline to expose the danger that widening
global inequality plays, it is also a stark reminder of
the elements that our survival on this planet depend
upon. Without water, we would simply cease to
exist, so ensuring that it is kept clean and available should be an obvious priority to global leaders. Despite the fact that Detroit is nestled inside
the world’s leading economic superpower, the UN
Rapporteurs cautioned that this “does not exempt
them from human rights obligations. Human rights
have precedence over financial and credit concerns. Human rights are primary. There is a whole
group and class of people whose human rights are at
stake.” u
thumbs down
Merely suspending members of the “Class of
DDS 2015 Gentleman.”
ê Reports indicate that nearly half of all Detroit residents are behind on their water bills and more than 17,000 households have already been disconnected.