Try It for Just a Day

April 18, 2013

The following is excerpted from UUSC President Bill Schulz’s e-mail to UUSC supporters in April 2013 about the human right to water around the world.

If you don’t think ready access to clean, affordable drinking water is a basic human right, try going without it for a day.

That will give you just an inkling of the tremendous challenge 780 million people around the world face — every single day.

It will demonstrate why UUSC has made the human right to water one of our priorities and a centerpiece campaign.

Your support for UUSC has already helped deliver the human right to water to thousands around the world.

People like Juliana, who once had to walk more than two miles — one way — to carry the day’s supply of water back to her rural Kenyan home in a 20-liter can strapped to her back.

And the indigenous people of Sipakapa, Guatemala, whose only water source was polluted when the government approved gold mining on their land.

And working families in California’s Central Valley who are forced to pay 20 percent of their $14,000 median household income on water.

UUSC is teaming up with grassroots partners here at home and around the world to defend our human right to water. We’re protecting drinking water in Kenya, winning constitutional guarantees in Ecuador, working for water treatment and a new constitution in Tanzania, forcing public water availability in Mexico, and passing landmark legislation in California.

And we’re just getting started. The human right to water is one of this century’s key issues in our ongoing struggle for justice around the world.