Articles
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Kenya’s High Court Ruling on Privatization Act: Lessons for Water Justice and Human Right to Water Advocacy
Kenya’s High Court recently made a landmark ruling that nullified the Privatisation Act 2023, signaling a significant setback for the government’s attempts to privatize state assets and meet conditions set by international lenders like the IMF. The ruling, however, offers key lessons for water justice advocates and African Commonwealth nations that share similar legal frameworks…
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From Silos to A Pan-African Front: The Africa Water Justice Network, Uniting Water Commoning Struggles Against Capital
22 March 2024 Millions on the African continent do not have access to clean drinking water. The current state can be traced back to Africa’s colonial past, when water was claimed and used for colonial economic projects only, with access for social uses restricted based on race and class. This legacy continues today, as water…
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Tapping into scandal: Unravelling the contradictions of water privatisation
Transferring control of water supply services to private hands erodes equitable access to a fundamental human right. WATER, the lifeblood of our planet, is an invaluable resource that has witnessed its fair share of conflicts. At the heart of these conflicts lies the highly charged issue of water privatisation, a policy that has sparked passionate…
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BPP Partner Mathare Social Justice Centre Struggles for Clean Water and Sanitation
Access to affordable and clean water cannot be taken for granted in Nairobi’s neighbourhood of Mathare. Gacheke Gachihi outlines the structural changes needed to guarantee affordable water for all. Since the early 2000s, the struggle to access clean water and sanitation in Mathare has continued to sharpen as the population increases and water demand and…
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No New Water on Earth, Only New Battlegrounds
Coumba Toure, @Kuumbati Storyteller; Movement Co-coordinator, Africans Rising; Board Chair, TrustAfrica Koni Benson, Organiser and historian at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa; Research Fellow, Blue Planet Project Meera Karunananthan, Feminist geographer, Carleton University – Canada; Co-director, Blue Planet Project The Alternative World Water Forum – Forum Alternatif Mondial de l’Eau (FAME) in French —…
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Autogestión, reclaiming the right to self-management of water
Twenty years after the Water War in Cochabamba (Bolivia), Marcela Olivera and Stefano Archidiacono reflect on “autogestión” of water as a practical and cultural dimension of the commons. A new piece for the series “Reimagining, remembering, and reclaiming water: from extractivism to commoning”. Although Bolivia was born as a centralist and unitarian state, there has always…
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New Packaging, Same Deal: City of Cape Town’s New Proposal to Replace Water Management Devices with the Drip System will further Water Apartheid
The City of Cape Town seems to have finally realised, after 15 years of grassroots organizing that Water Management Devices (WMD) need to go. The bad news is that its new proposal will continue to deprive people of adequate water supplies.