Slipping Through Our Fingers

This year marks the beginning of the International Water for Life Decade, from 2005 to 2015. The United Nations, through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Health Organization, have designated the next ten years, beginning last March 22, 2005, to focusing global attention on what should be obvious: water for life, and aims, not just to highlight the magnitude of the world’s water problem, but also to bring all ‘stakeholders’ together to apply workable solutions. Clean water is described by the UNICEF’s executive director, Carol Bellamy as “an inviolable right, not a privilege.” It is the basis of all life and is recognized as a humanitarian issue and a human right, the misallocation of which becomes a breach of legal norms. According to UNICEF, two buckets – 20 liters – of safe water a day is the bare minimum a child needs to live. This is enough