Public Services International (PSI) has issued a 3-page paper titled, ‘Implementing the Right to Water – An Action Plan for Trade Unions’. PSI represents 20 million members in 160 countries.
PSI says, “In the past year, the water movements have scored two important victories in the United Nations which reaffirm the Right to Water (RTW). Now it depends on each of us to implement the RTW, in a manner that supports the goals of PSI for Quality Public Services. The two UN votes in support of RTW provide specific tools for us to ensure that our governments live up to their responsibilities. The Council of Canadians has published a succinct briefing on this process, looking at the history and anticipating the future.”
Their paper then notes ‘summary extracts’ from Maude Barlow’s Our Right to Water: A People’s Guide to Implementing the United Nations’ Recognition of the Right to Water and Sanitation. With the PSI paper, the summary of Barlow’s report is now available in English, German, French, Japanese, Spanish, and Swedish.
To read Barlow’s paper in full, please go to http://canadians.org/water/documents/RTW/RTW-intl-web.pdf (in English), http://canadians.org/water/documents/RTW/RTW-fr-web.pdf (in French), http://canadians.org/water/documents/RTW/RTW-es-web.pdf (in Spanish).
The PSI paper says, “PSI unions should immediately integrate the RTW into their action plans, with an especial focus on alliance building and lobbying and advocacy to their governments. We need to initiate or reactivate our alliances with civil society in such a way as to ensure the broadest possible support for our advocacy efforts. Through such broad alliances, unions will be able to meet a number of their overall goals and will be able to strengthen their campaigns for quality public services. Our national RTW campaigns should be shared with other unions and other civil society actors. PSI will devote a specific page on the http://www.qpsactionnow.org website to the national efforts to implement the Right to Water. We will also post useful tools on this site.”
To read their 3-page paper in English, please click here.
