The Soroptimists Commit Themselves to Water

WATER, A NATURAL PROPERTY and COMMUNAL INHERITANCE
A PUBLIC PROPERTY

• Sensitive to the universal principle of water, the source of life

• Conscious that it concerns one of the crucial stakes in this 21st century for the future of humanity and life on the planet

• Convinced that its increasing short supply in a quantitative and qualitative level, due to global warming, gives it even more a character of communal property, and public world heritage.

WE ASK

• Respect for this essential property, indispensable to the life of all human beings or living species.

• Guaranteed access to all to this precious property and its recognition as a human right.

For this dramatic situation in terms of food, access to water, health, for three billion impoverished human beings should finally be taken into account.

• Participation of every citizen to its safeguarding, protection, valorisation in the interest of all and future generations.

Because it is unacceptable that access to drinkable water is still denied to more than a billion and a half people, that more than 2.6 billion have no access at all to sanitary facilities and that the measures taken at the present time to stop the devastation of the planet’s water resources still remain derisory.

In the light of the conclusions and the proposals formulated during the International Conference «Peace with Water» which was held in the European Parliament in Brussels on the 12th and 13th February

WE ASK

• the political powers engaged in the negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climatic Change (UNFCCC) to support us legislatively and financially in order not to make water a source of conflict between populations, regions, riverside countries or transnational hydrographic basins.

WE EXPECT

• That the problematic of water should be put on the agenda of the COP 15 of Copenhagen in December 2009

• That the « Treaty of Copenhagen » should approve of the principle of starting a process of definition and approval of a World Protocol on Water for the period 2010-2012.

• That the Conference of Copenhagen should recognise the urgency of a Political World Agreement on Water under the aegis of the United Nations and affirms the necessity for the international community to have at their disposal an effective action and world cooperation instrument such as the « United Nations Water Authority ».