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	In the Trenches for Clean Water by Saul Garlick Policy Innovations   January 15, 2008   Water, our most basic need, is poised to be the most baffling challenge of the 21st century. It is being ignored wantonly at a time when more than 1 million people per year die from its scarcity and contamination. Children under age five account for at least 90 percent of water-related deaths. Meanwhile, economic productivity and educational opportunities are lost to illness, leaving millions more in an impoverished state even if they do survive their first five years of life.   Access to water is a human right. Yet that statement makes many people uncomfortable. Most in the developed world can hardly imagine water being anything more than a nominal expense that is easily drawn from a faucet. They think, "Surely it is a commodity to be bought and sold. It hardly costs anything, and it is even reusable, so what''s the big deal?"   The big deal is that 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water at all. Most of those people live in Africa and Asia. But if you ask them whether water is a human right, they will laugh the notion off, with appreciation for your kind naïveté. But they will not discount water''s importance. They will tell you that they walk up to 2 hours per day to fetch water that is often found in muddy puddles from rain runoff during the few brief months when rain does fall. This kind of water is rife with disease-causing organisms, which they drink unquestioningly.   The areas in which these grateful people live are suffering from soil erosion, decreasing tree coverage, and increasing malaria rates. The environment is deteriorating, and sanitation is simply horrific. Without adequate water for drinking and cooking, hygiene is sacrificed as well. They are forced to eat without washing their hands.   Poor hygiene, in its unrelenting ways, cycles back into the water sources. When people lack decent latrines and sanitation resources, fecal matter and other biohazards circulate back into the muddy puddles from which the people draw their daily water. Even more prevalent are water sources damaged by animal waste.   Given these remarkable challenges, what can be done to meet the global demand for clean water?   A lot can be done. First, it should be noted that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Given its vital nature, water cannot be treated as a commodity alone. Research suggests that water, when commoditized in poor countries, costs more to the rural poor than it does to the urban wealthy. Given that each life is of equal value, this regressive water cost is as much tragedy as it is corruption.   Access to clean water should not be a luxury enjoyed by a few. It must be a right enjoyed by the masses. Fortunately, local populations can offer help in bringing this resource to their communities. In Kenya, the Student Movement for Real Change is building a 28 km freshwater line and initiating sanitation projects. The local community, led by the Kayafungo Women Water Project group, is eager to begin digging the trenches where pipes will run. The community is committed to fulfilling this role without expecting compensation.   The community is thirsty, and they proposed a solution to their own problem. With a moderate dose of leadership, in the form of collaboration between a local community-based organization, an international nongovernmental organization, and the Kenyan government, 36,000 more people in Kayafungo will soon enjoy access to clean water.   This success flies in the face of privatization solutions proposed by international financial institutions and other development agencies. But nobody should be surprised. When sold to the poor, water saps them of what little income they may have. Water, delivered comprehensively through partnership, and maintained locally by women''s groups and community-based organizations, yields pride, confidence, and economic development.   Access to clean water is proven to increase gross domestic product in a developing nation by as much as 3.4 percent per year. Moreover, returns on investment can reach $3–34 for the community per $1 invested in the production of water, according to the World Health Organization.   * This essay is adapted from comments made by the author at a recent conference at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Visit the related web page
	Call to Boycott Slave Children Cotton by Kester Kenn Klomegah Inter Press Service Uzbekistan   Moscow, January 4, 2008   A group of civil society activists has called for immediate boycott of Uzbek cotton produced by forced child labour.   Unlike other developing countries, they say, child labour in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan is not the result of poverty but of a coercion policy adopted by the central government.   “Under the Soviet Union, forced labour was accompanied by some care for the health of children, the quality of their nutrition, and development of the rural social infrastructure,” Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Paris-based group Human Rights in Central Asia told IPS on email. “Now forced labour is compensated neither by decent payment, nor through public funds.”   Every year, starting September, schools across the country are closed for more than two months. Students are forced to pick cotton by order of central and local authorities.   Children work at least eight hours daily on the cotton fields, sometimes without rest for days. They inhale dust, laden with residues of chemicals, pesticides and defoliants used in the fields before the cotton harvest.   “Children’s normal education is interrupted to serve the interest of the small elite who benefit grossly from the high profits from trading cotton on the world market,” Surat Ikramov, chairman of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Defenders of Uzbekistan told IPS from Tashkent.   “It’s time to begin radical reforms in the cotton industry, to do away with exploitation of teenagers, and abolish forced child labour in the cotton fields,” Ikramov said. “As a result of forced child labour, children cannot learn in schools and colleges during this academic period, and lag behind in the school curriculum, while some children fall sick from hard work and exhaustion.”   Rights activists say that refusal to collect cotton can be punished by expulsion from the educational institution. There have been cases when students were beaten up by school staff for refusing to work for the cotton harvest. Child labour provides more than half of the cotton produced in Uzbekistan. Payment to the children is negligible.   Statistics on children employed in the cotton sector in Uzbekistan are difficult to obtain, but the London-based rights group Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) says around 200,000 children work in the major cotton-producing region Ferghana. Ferghana is a city with a population of 185,000, about 420 km east of capital Tashkent.   “It is certainly reasonable to assume that there are many tens of thousands of children and students forced to work in the fields each year,” programme director at EJF Juliette Williams told IPS.   “Children are being used as cheap labour force by a government which imposes Soviet-style cotton quotas, and which is unwilling to pay a decent living wage to cotton farmers and labourers, thereby ensuring that children are used instead of adults,” Williams said.   “The use of children ensures maximum profits to the ruling elite, which benefits from the supply of cotton to western consumers,” Williams said. Just three trading companies controlled by President Islam Karimov’s family are licensed to export cotton.   EJF says this use of child labour violates international laws and conventions to which many governments of cotton-producing countries are signatories.   The practice violates the UN convention on the rights of a child. That convention provides that children have a right “to be protected from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous, or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.”   “As forced labour on the cotton harvest prevents children from attending school oftentimes for over a third of the academic year, it clearly violates the children’s right to an education. Work on the harvest and exposure to pesticides and defoliants is also demonstrably detrimental to children’s health,” Cassandra Cavanaugh, who was senior researcher for Human Rights Watch from 1998 to 2001 in central Asia told IPS.   “The simple fact is that cheap clothing and other cotton items in the developed world are being subsidised by child labourers in poor cotton producing countries,” Williams said. “We believe that consumers do have a choice and that every time they spend their money they are effectively casting a vote for the way in which they want the world to look — they can opt to choose cotton products made without use of child labour or in abusive conditions, and should send this clear message to retailers and manufacturers.”   Atayeva agrees that in order to break the existing system it is necessary to deprive those who control cotton export of their unfair profits.   “Under the circumstances, only international boycott of Uzbek cotton can achieve that goal. The boycott will force the Uzbek government to repeal child labour and provide farmers with real economic freedom. The cotton sector in Uzbekistan can still be profitable without exploitation of children and forced labour.”   The rights activists have called on the European Bank and the World Bank to refrain from financing projects in the cotton and textile sectors in Uzbekistan until needed reforms are carried out.
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