Grassroots Activism
UUSC’s eye-to-eye model of engagement has shaped its work on the human right to water. UUSC partners with grassroots organizations comprised of affected communities themselves, as they advocate for their rights at the local, state, and international levels.
The International Water and Sanitation Centre and the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program have found that water development programs that are built through community involvement are assured of much more success than those imposed on communities through externally planned development programs. When community members are involved in planning their water services — especially when planning is sensitive to the needs of both men and women, and those in poverty have a place at the table — the water systems are more sustainable, customers feel the services are worth the costs they pay, and the services tend to meet the needs of more community members.[19] While many organizations will acknowledge this, grassroots community activists still have to stand up against apathy and a lack of transparency to participate in the development of their own water utilities.
UUSC supports grassroots organizations like the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, struggling to stop water shutoffs in Detroit; the Tanzania Gender Networking Program, which uses community-based participatory research on gendered issues like the human right to water to demand change from policymakers; and the Fundacion Agua con Vida (FACV) in Bolivia, which works to ensure that the water utilities in some of the country’s most impoverished communities are public and accountable to the people they serve.
Partner Spotlight: FEJUVE and FACV
UUSC supports the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of El Alto (FEJUVE) and FACV, grassroots activist organizations in Bolivia, in their struggle to realize publicly controlled water systems. The work these organizations do stands before the backdrop of FEJUVE’s leadership in the infamous Cochabamba Water War (2000).[20] This First Water War ousted the private major international utility, Suez, and reestablished the standard of publicly administered water utilities in Bolivia.
In 2005, the administration of Evo Morales broke up the public water utility in La Paz/El Alto and proposed a new model. Residents found themselves being charged exorbitant prices for water services that they never received.
Approximately one third of the residents of El Alto, about 200,000 people, had no water access and, as FACV founder Julian Perez notes, no realistic possibility of gaining access.
The fee the utility charged for a water hookup cost over a half year’s earnings.[21] FEJUVE again engaged in mass mobilization, initiating the Second Water Wars. People came out in such massive numbers that the government agreed to come to El Alto and meet in open, televised, public forums, at which residents gave evidence that they lacked the human right to water. Perez recalls: “The women were blocking the street. . . . There would be confrontation with the police. . . . Normally you would think it would be men. But the women took the leadership; they were on the front line.” Residents of El Alto took part in these demonstrations for six months until, in January 2005, the president decreed an end to the private utility.
“It was a huge victory for the whole world — that a poor city . . . would confront this largest, most powerful company — Suez.” But, he adds, “It was a partial victory. . . . We wanted to have a new model of service that . . . responds to the needs of the people.”[22]
In 2009, Bolivia recognized that all citizens must have equitable access to water and that the human right to water is part of the “most fundamental right to life.”[23] Still, Bolivians on the ground struggle to realize equity, especially for those who are marginalized by class, gender, or culture. As the new utility project proceeded, FEJUVE held workshops, distributed education materials, and engaged the media. Through their work, the utility established a policy of providing a minimal amount of free (basic) water for low-income residents’ use in 2013; in 2014, President Morales implemented a free basic water minimum of 10 cubic meters (over 2,600 gallons) per household per month. These victories were won through massive popular mobilization, with the leadership of FEJUVE and women acting as primary mobilizers, all placing their lives on the line simply to realize the human right to water.[24]
Now, FACV is working to ensure that the Misicuni Dam, the massive infrastructure project in Cochabamba, actually benefits the over two million residents and does not saddle rate payers with fees that would be impossible to afford. FEJUVE and FACV continue to work with the growing population of El Alto to reduce fees, help people receive fair water rates, and make utilities accountable to the people.
[19] Bruce Gross et al., Linking Sustainability with Demand, Gender and Poverty: A Study in Community-Managed Water Supply Projects in 15 Countries (International Water and Sanitation Centre, WSP, 2001), 23–24.
[20] In Cochabamba, the government awarded a private contract for water utilities, a change that resulted in rising tariffs with no corresponding improvement in service. When customers on the city’s periphery found that their water rates rose 40–200%, even when piped through water systems they themselves had built and financed, they took to the streets demanding change; Vivienne Bennett et al., “Water and Gender: The Unexpected Connection that Really Matters,” Journal Of International Affairs 61, no. 2 (2008), 120.
[21] Julian Perez, interview by author, December 10, 2014.
[22] Julian Perez, interview by author, December 9, 2014.
[23] Bolivia Constitution, articles 16, 20, 373.
[24] Tara Pistilli, “Women, Water & Privatization: A Human Rights-Based Approach to Global Water Governance,” Cordozo Journal of Law and Gender 20 (2014), 797. Scholars contend that that the successful mass mobilization and advocacy of groups like FEJUVE and FACV in state-level policymaking is evidence of a deep type of grassroots community organizing that is unusual among Western democratic societies. Marcela Olivera, “Water Beyond the State.” NACLA Report on the Americas 47, no. 3, (2014), 66.
