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UPDATE: Blue Planet Project and KruHa together on the right to water

Meera Karunananthan, our new friends name to be inserted here (KruHa), Satoko Kishimoto (Transnational Institute), Maude Barlow

Meera Karunananthan, our new friend’s name to be inserted here (KruHa), Satoko Kishimoto (Transnational Institute), Maude Barlow

In July 2010, the Blue Planet Project joined with people around the world to celebrate the United Nations General Assembly adoption of Resolution 64/292, the recognition of the right to water and sanitation. But we all knew this UN vote was only one major step to ensure water justice for all.

In order to ensure that the newly recognized right served as a tool for social movements and frontline communities, Council of Canadians national chairperson Maude Barlow wrote the report, ‘Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of Water and Sanitation as a Human Right’.

The Blue Planet Project has now launched a series of reports as additional chapters to ‘Our Right to Water’.

This morning we met with a representative of KruHa (The People’s Coalition for the Right to Water) and presented him with a formatted copy of the report he and his group authored.

The Indonesian report focuses on the World Bank-imposed market-based water policies have led to deep inequalities in access to water and sanitation in Indonesia. It demonstrates how the country’s new water legislation contradicts a long history of respecting water as a commons in Indonesian tradition.

To read the report on the right to water in Indonesia – titled ‘Our Right to Water: An Expose on Foreign Pressure to Derail the Human Right to Water in Indonesia – please go to http://www.blueplanetproject.net/documents/RTW/RTW-Indonesia-1.pdf.

This report – along with others available at http://canadians.org/rtw – were presented to United Nations special rapporteur Catarina de Alburquerque earlier this week in Marseille. For a blog on that presentation, please go to http://canadians.org/blog/?p=14085.