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UN / DETROIT WATER HUMAN RIGHTS
STORY: UN / DETROIT WATER HUMAN RIGHTS
TRT: 2.52
SOURCE: UNIFEED-UNTV
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 22 OCTOBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY
FILE – RECENT, NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations headquarters
22 OCTOBER 2014, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, auditorium
3. Med shot, Special Rapporteur Catarina de Albuquerque speaking on stage
4. Med shot, audience
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Catarina de Albuquerque, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation:
“NGOs and also people, individuals from Detroit, started writing to me complaining and telling me about the large-scale disconnections. This made me send an urgent appeal to the US government in June, together with the Special Rapporteur on Poverty who was here today at the discussion and then we issued a press statement at the end of June. We continued to be in touch with the NGOs who then started telling me, why don’t you come, come, come, come, come and see, come and visit, come.”
6. Med shot, audience
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Catarina de Albuquerque, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation:
“First suggestion is re-establish all the connections, water connections that have been cut to people who live in poverty. And as you know, forty percent of the population in Detroit lives below the poverty line, 99 percent of which are African Americans. These people who cannot afford their bills should not get their water disconnected simply because they don’t have the money to pay.”
8. Wide shot, auditorium
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Catarina de Albuquerque, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation:
“It puts their health at risk, it puts, I’ve talked with mothers whose daughters don’t want to go to school because they say they stink; so it puts education at risk, it puts health at risk and it puts family integrity at risk. According to the legislation in Michigan, yours kids can be taken away from you if your house does not have water. So it separates children from their parents. So there are different reasons that made me state that this situation is violating human rights.”
10. Med shot, de Albuquerque speaking on stage
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Catarina de Albuquerque, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation:
“It is retrogression in human rights terms, why? Because the rights were there. People were enjoying the rights, and now for reasons that are beyond their control, if you lose your job and you are unemployed, you are losing a human right.”
12. Med shot, de Albuquerque speaking on stage
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Catarina de Albuquerque, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation:
“The number of disconnections is very big only this year there have been over 27,000 disconnections, which means that many more people have been affected because there are more than one person living in one house and the pressure on the city has been big. It is true that the city has been adopting some measures like payment plans, so the city thinks that they are doing something, and they are doing something. What I say is that that that something, which is good, is not enough.”
14. Wide shot, end of meeting
A United Nations special rapporteur on the right to water said today (22 Oct) that the city of Detroit is violating human rights by conducting large-scale water supply disconnections to homes that have not paid their bills.
Catarina de Albuquerque, who together with Philip Alston, the current Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights hosted an event on “The human rights to water and sanitation: tools for their realization and remedies for violations”, said she first heard from NGOs and individuals about the situation in Detroit.
De Albuquerque said “this made me send an urgent appeal to the US government in June, and at the insistence of the NGOs decided to visit the US city. On a three day visit to Detroit over the weekend, they conducted and informal fact-finding mission into the city’s water shut-offs by the water and sewage department.
She told UNIFEED the city must re-establish all the water connections “that have been cut to people who live in poverty” and noted that “forty percent of the population in Detroit lives below the poverty line, 99 percent of which are African Americans.”
These people who cannot afford their bills should not get their water disconnected simply because they don’t have the money to pay.”
De Albuquerque said she had “talked with mothers whose daughters don’t want to go to school because they say they stink; so it puts education at risk, it puts health at risk and it puts family integrity at risk” as “according to the legislation in Michigan, yours kids can be taken away from you if your house does not have water.”
The Special Rapporteur said “it is retrogression in human rights terms, why? Because the rights were there. People were enjoying the rights, and now for reasons that are beyond their control, if you lose your job and you are unemployed, you are losing a human right.”
The city has disconnected water from at least 27,000 households this year, with as many as 10,000 households currently without running water. Hundreds of thousands of additional households are at risk of having their tap cut.
De Albuquerque said “the number of disconnections is very big” and the city “has been adopting some measures like payment plans” but added that “that something, which is good, is not enough.”
Detroit is in the midst of bailing itself out of bankruptcy
Due to high poverty and unemployment rates, relatively expensive water bills in Detroit are unaffordable for a significant portion of the population. In addition, the experts noted, repeated cases of gross errors on water bills have been reported which are also used as a ground for disconnections.
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