Maude Barlow, former UN advisor on water, ‘Alternative Nobel’ prize winner and founder of the Blue Planet Project, has condemned the Botswana government’s failure to allow Bushmen to access water.

Barlow’s remarks come a week after the United Nations declared water a fundamental human right, and two weeks after a Botswana High Court judge ruled that the Kalahari Bushmen cannot access a water borehole on their lands.

‘Last week, the UN General Assembly declared that everyone, everywhere, has the right to water’, Barlow said. ‘But now the world witnesses one of Africa’s most prosperous countries denying its first inhabitants the right to sink a well, while promoting mining and safari camps just a few miles away.

It’s hard to imagine a more cruel and inhuman way to treat people.