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WATER: COMMODITY OR HUMAN RIGHT?

Lessons from Flint

by Ryan Stoa, Jurist

When I teach Water Resources Law to my students, I often start each semester by juxtaposing two competing conceptualizations: water as a private commodity vs. water as a human right. The contrast demonstrates the diversity in approaches to water management, while foreshadowing the public-private tensions that permeate contemporary water law debates. Some students are attracted by the promises of privatization, including capital investments to upgrade infrastructure and the efficiencies of allowing market forces to allocate water where it is most valued. Other students push back, noting the fundamental human need for water as a justification for holding water resources in common, while citing the negative externalities that frustrate attempts to monetize water accurately.

Both viewpoints are playing out in the wake of the Flint, Michigan, water crisis. Last month I wrote about the rhetoric following the crisis, noting that many critics were echoing the human right to water perspective. One Michigan state representative even proposed a bill that would declare water to be a human right. To many observers, the crisis was caused by water managers holding financial considerations above public health and environmental justice. Indeed, Flint’s decision to switch from water provided by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to water provided by the Karegnondi Water Authority was largely a financial one, as the move was projected to save the city $19 million over eight years. When the Flint city council voted to return to Detroit water, the city’s emergency manager opposed the move on financial grounds. To many, water cannot be managed with such financial tunnel-vision, and a human right to water might rebalance water managers’ priorities.

But in the last several weeks, another view has (re)emerged. Some have called for further privatization of water resources. To these critics, the Flint water crisis is a crisis of public governance, one that may have been avoided had a private utility been in charge. A private utility would still have received government oversight, while avoiding the messy political battles necessary to receive infrastructural investments. A private utility, furthermore, would not have enjoyed sovereign immunity, providing an incentive to avoid litigation arising from water contamination.

SYRIA: REVOLUTION AND INTERVENTION

An Interview with Joseph Daher

by Frieda Afary, Radio Zamaneh

Joseph Daher is a Syrian-Swiss Marxist intellectual with a PhD in development at the University of SOAS, London. He is also a member of Solidarités in Switzerland and of the Revolutionary Left Current in Syria. What do leftist Syrian intellectuals think about the current crisis, Assad’s future, the intervention of world powers, the activism of forces representing alternatives, and the role of the Syrian Kurds? This text contains Daher’s response to two questions posed to better comprehend the events in Syria from an alternative point of view.

What is your analysis of the Russian government’s air-strikes in Syria since September 30?

The objectives of these air-strikes are clear: save and consolidate the political and military power of the Assad regime. In other words, crush all forms of opposition—whether democratic or reactionary—to the Assad regime under the so-called “war on terror.” Most targets are civilians and factions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) still existing. About 100,000 civilians have been forced to flee their regions because of Russian bombings. Russian bombings also destroyed dozens of hospitals while doctors and patients were killed in these raids. In areas such as the outskirts of Aleppo, the bombings in some cases even benefited the the Islamic State (IS), thanks to a lightning breakthrough against factions of the FSA disoriented by Russian strikes. Moreover, Russian strikes are operated with the direct collaboration of the US and Israel.

IRAN’S ‘MODERATE’ HANGMAN

by Rahim Hamid, Middle East Eye

The appalling human rights situation in Iran has not improved since Hassan Rouhani—touted in some circles in the West as a “moderate” and a “reformer”—became president of the Islamic Republic in 2013. Since taking office, more than 2,000 people have been hanged under Rouhani’s watch, the biggest scale of executions in the past 25 years, adding to the black pages of the regime’s history of human rights violations since the revolution of 1979.

The execution spree in the first half of 2015 was not missed by the human rights group Amnesty International, which noted that “death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality.” The rights group added: “They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalised at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation.”

As a result, Iran became the top country committing executions per capita—again under Rouhani’s watch.

THE SIEGES IN SYRIA

from IRIN

LONDON — At precisely the same time as aid lorries pulled into the besieged Syrian village of Madaya on Jan. 11, too late to save those who had already starved to death, convoys also entered the besieged areas of Fua and Kefraya. The timing was no coincidence. Last week’s deal to allow aid into Madaya, which is surrounded by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including Hezbollah fighters, was more of a swap by warring parties than a humanitarian gesture: the same militant group inside Madaya surrounds Fua and Kefraya.

That this was the only way the war’s belligerents could agree to rescue the estimated 42,000 civilians of Madaya, who had reportedly been eating spiced water and tree leaves, points to the complications of delivering aid through a blockade.

And the small village on the Lebanese border is not an isolated case. In the fifth year of Syria’s war, depending on who you ask, there are anywhere between 393,700 and 2 million people living under siege and in desperate need of help.

As aid trucks brought relief to Madaya, IRIN went looking for information on sieges, and found out that even the simplest questions don’t have easy answers.

‘THE POWER TO DEFEND OUR TERRITORY’

Indigenous Communities Win Consulation Law in Guatemala

by Jeff Abbott, Upside Down World

On September 10, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court ordered the suspension of licenses for the construction of the Vega I and Vega II hydroelectric projects in the Ixil territory. The court made the order following the failure of the company to consult the indigenous communities prior to the issuing of permits for the project owned by the Spanish firm Hidroxil, S.A.

The Constitutional Court ordered the Ministry of Energy and Mining to “take the necessary measures to ensure that the consultation of affected and interested indigenous communities is practiced in accordance with applicable international standards, concerning the installation of hydroelectric power plant La Vega I.” The court order stated that such consultation “should be seen as an intercultural dialogue in good faith, in which consensus and mutual accommodation of the legitimate interests of the parties is sought.”

The two hydro projects were initially approved in 2011, and would have affected the Xamalá and Sumalá rivers in the municipality of Santa Maria Nebaj. Indigenous authorities had first issued filed the cases against the hydro projects in 2012. The authority had requested that the court annul Agreement 99-2011, which was signed during the administration of Álvaro Colom in 2011, and allowed the Spanish firm to construct the Vega project. The community leaders were troubled by the firm’s lack of respect for the community’s rights upon arrival.

INDEPENDENCE HERO TO OPPOSITION ICON

Hocine Ait Ahmed, Algeria’s Voice of Conscience, Passes On

by Mansour Bensahnoune Ulhadi, MAK USA

Hocine Ait Ahmed, a hero of Algeria’s independence struggle and later a leading opposition figure, died in Switzerland at the age of 89 on Dec. 24. A founding member of the resistance against French colonial rule, he would break from the post-independence regime over its growing authoritarianism—and especially its treatment of his Berber (Amazigh) people of the Kabylia region in Algeria’s mountainous east. Mansour Bensahnoune Ulhadi, coordinator of the US branch of the Kabylia Self-Determination Movement, offers this remembrance.

It is with sadness that we heard of the passing of the Kabyle leader Hocine Ait Ahmed. One of the early leaders in the Algerian movement for freedom from French colonialism, his vision for freedom, justice and democracy got him arrested and jailed by both the French and then the new Algerian regime. He was first arrested when the plane transporting him from Morocco to Tunisia was intercepted and forced to land by the French air force in 1956. He would later be jailed by the Algerian government, when he stood up for democracy, justice and freedom for all. In 1963, one year after independence, he formed the country’s first opposition party, the Front des Forces Socialistes or FFS. He was backed by the army regiments of Kabylia, a military district called Wilaya III. The Arab regime led by the traitor Ben Bella attacked Kabylia, and the war between the Arabs and the Kabyles lasted two years. The war ended the day he was captured in 1965, marking a defeat for the Kabyle people and democracy in Algeria. But he escaped an Algerian jail later that year, and continued his fight for freedom to the last days of his life.

D.I.Y. IN DAMASCUS

Rooftop Gardens in Syria’s Besieged Neighborhoods

by Youmna al-Dimashqi, Syria Deeply

Rebel-held areas on the outskirts of Damascus have endured more than two years of government blockades aimed at making them surrender or face the prospect of starvation. Disease and malnutrition run rampant and food is scarce.

As in many other such areas across the country, some residents of these besieged areas have mustered the will and energy to adapt and survive, often in ingeniously creative ways.

Notably, rooftop gardens are popping up across the towns that are allowing people to find new ways of feeding themselves and their families. Green patches now dot the rooftops of southern Damascus neighborhoods like Yelda, Babila and Beit Sahem, areas of the capital that have been under government-imposed siege for nearly 24 months.

REFUGEES DEFY CRACKDOWN IN TURKEY

by Andrew Connelly, IRIN

The gloomy streets of Basmane in the Turkish coastal city of Izmir have long been associated with bordellos and drug dealing, but this year it is the smuggling of souls that has become the neighbourhood’s key nefarious industry. Compared to the summer months when Izmir was the main departure point for the roughly 5,000 refugees setting off for the Greek islands by boat every day, the city is relatively quiet. Winter temperatures and rougher seas have deterred some. Following a recent agreement between the EU and Turkey, in which the former will pay the latter €3 billion to stem the flow of refugees into Europe, many more may soon be forcibly prevented from making the journey.

Amer twirls amber-colored prayer beads outside one of Izmir’s numerous hotels. With a black money-belt strapped around his waist, athletic shoes and a heap of rucksacks piled up on the floor next to him, his purpose in the city is easy to guess, and sheepishly he admits: “I’m waiting here to swim to Europe! Well, hopefully by boat anyway.”

CLIMATE CHANGE MIGRANTS OF BANGLADESH

by Mubashar Hasan, IRIN

DHAKA — Al-Amin used to be a rice farmer in the fertile plains of Bangladesh’s vast Ganges Delta, but the river washed his land away and now he pulls a rickshaw in a slum in the sprawling capital, Dhaka.

Al-Amin, who uses just one name, is among the approximately 350,000 people that the World Bank estimates migrate to Dhaka each year. Most of them come from the delta, where advancing water levels, increasingly frequent storms and the rising salinity of the soil are destroying farmland. Al-Amin now lives with his family of seven in a one-room shack in a crowded slum called Bhola, which is named after the district that most residents left when their way of life eroded with the land.

Al-Amin’s house is still there, but now it sits deserted next to the riverbank where his farm used to be. “We don’t go back home in the holidays as there is no home that we can return to,” he told IRIN.

ASYLUM SEEKERS ON HUNGER STRIKE IN TEXAS

by Peter Gorman, World War 4 Report

More than 100 women detained at the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas, went on a hunger strike in late October that lasted nearly two weeks, protesting the length of time they are being held before their amnesty cases are heard. It has since become a rolling hunger strike, with units of 40-50 women participating two or three days at a time and then another unit taking over. It is unknown how many of the center’s units are participating in the rolling hunger strike.

The Hutto Detention center has been problematic for years, both when it was a regular jail, and more recently as an alien detention center. Hutto is run by private prison profiteers Corrections Corporation of America. It was a medium level men’s prison until 2006, when it was revamped and utilized as a family detention center, housing women and their children who had applied for political asylum. The revamping meant paintings on the walls, and little children in prison uniforms, and cell doors locked for 12 hours at night while the incarcerated mothers and children waited for their cases to be heard.

RUSSIA’S SYRIA INTERVENTION… AND THE LEFT

The ‘War on Terror’ and its New Supporters

by Leila Al Shami

Its now been five weeks since Russia began its bombing campaign in support of the fascist regime in Syria, transforming a struggle against domestic tyranny into resistance against foreign invasion and occupation. The discourse used to justify Russia’s intervention is just an extension of the “War on Terror.” The Americans invaded and occupied Iraq and Afghanistan on the pretext of “fighting terrorism,” thus creating more terrorism and extremism, and now the Russians and Iranians are doing the same in Syria. The difference is that many of those who vocally opposed the first war on terror now remain silent or actively support this latest incarnation.

Of course “terrorism” is a blanket term which the Syrian regime employs against any dissent. And the main targets of Russia’s imperialist adventures have not been the Daesh (ISIS) fascists. Instead Russia’s military might is directed at Syria’s resistance militias and civilians living in liberated zones which have become death camps under the state’s scorched earth tactics and crippling blockades. It’s the working class suburbs and rural districts of Hama and Idlib, those that raged so fiercely against the regime, that are today being pounded by Russian airstrikes. The people attacked in Homs are those who defeated Daesh a year ago.

REFUGEES FACE BACKLASH —IN INDIA

by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report

Northeast India’s Assam state is still simmering with the latest wave of protests that erupted after the Indian government’s initiative to protect the status of religious minorities from Bangladesh and Pakistan who have taken shelter within India’s borders. Most of Assam’s civil society groups are presently on the streets expressing resentment over the Centre’s move.

However, a forum of like-minded individuals has also come forward to support the asylum-seekers. The forum is calling for a concrete refugee policy by New Delhi—something the government has avoided for many years.

But the issue breaks down in surprising ways. Supporters of the refugees often appeal to the pan-Hindu identity politics espoused by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Those protesting the new policy include Assam’s indigenous peoples, both suspicious of Hindu nationalism and fearful of being overwhelmed in their own territory.

CounterVortex

Category: Uncategorized