Taking Action for the Right to Water

Joseph Santos-Lyons, the UUA Director of Campus Ministry and Field Organizing, recently took part in a UUSC fact-finding trip to Ecuador.

UUSC is supporting a legal and organizing project around the human right to water. One of the manifestations of the violation of this human right is the contamination of the public water system in poor and people of color communities. Guayaquil, Ecuador, had one such incident that affected eight public schools.

More than 150 children were diagnosed with Hepatitis A over the period of several months from a number of schools. The outbreak was caught early on by school doctors, and information was shared with the authorities and the water company (Bechtel), yet no action was taken and the schools were blamed for poor sanitary conditions.

Mi Cometa, a community group and UUSC program partner, and their public watch partner the Public Observatory Network, kept organizing from the first outbreak in 2005 into today. The debate has been very public, mentioned in the papers, radio, and television. The effects of the outbreak are still being dealt with: children are reporting chronic physical and mental health effects. This trauma, and the lack of a meaningful immediate government response, is fueling more social action around the human right to water.

We visited one of the schools with the largest outbreak, and met both children and their parents. Mi Cometa invited the children to draw pictures of their experience with Hep A, and parents talked about what political action they could take. The energy was really high!