Señores(as)

HERNAN ANDRADE
President of the Senate

GERMAN VARON
President of the House of Representatives

EDUARDO ENRÍQUEZ
President of the First Commission of the Senate

KARIME MOTA Y MORAD
President of the First Commission of the House of Representatives

CONGRESS OF THE REPUBLIC OF COLOMBIA

Honourable congresspersons:

Respectfully, we direct your attention to the decision which will face the legislature over which you preside from the 16th of March 2009, the date on which congressional activities recommence, with respect to the convocation of a referendum to put before the Colombian people; the consecration of potable water as a fundamental human right, guaranteed by the supply to all of a minimum subsistence amount of water; the special protection of ecosystems that are essential for the water cycle and their priority use for this natural end, without which the aforementioned right is impossible; and the management of drinking-water and sewerage services by public, state and community organisations – unfortunately this management has been delegated or ceded through various methods to private companies, many of them transnational, through which water ceases to become a common public good and is converted into a commodity - as a means to reclaim water’s essential character for life.

The signatures of two million thirty nine thousand Colombian men and women have asked for a referendum in order that it is the people that decide the aforementioned. This is the highest number of people anywhere in the world that have expressed their will in this way asking for such a thing. This initiative is as such a historic milestone which elevates your country to an important place with respect to contemporary initiatives in the area of human rights as related to life and the environment. It is also noteworthy for the unfortunate reason that, well, the news which normally arrives from Colombia is related to your long and cruel armed conflict, to narcotrafficking and to various discouraging events for the future of your nation. For this reason, that it has been possible to advance an initiative like "The Water Referendum" in a peaceful way, obtaining such diverse and widespread support, is without doubt a progressive signal.

The crisis of the lack of access to potable water of more than 1.2 billion human beings in the world, a quantity to which should be added the millions of persons who, because they have private water connections in their homes, cannot pay the high tariffs which the commercialisation of water implies; the daily deaths of ten thousand people from preventable diseases for the lack of clean water and basic sanitation, of which five thousand are children below the age of five years old, many of them Colombian; and the environmental degradation, which if it continues will increase these tragedies to unimaginable dimensions. These facts have led to a worldwide movement for potable water as a human right and to the rejection of the privatisation of water and the public services associated with it. The alternative cannot be other than to construct water democracy counting for this on the most widespread citizen participation and advancing among other things a public management without corruption, and with social before economic efficiency.

You and all of the members of the Congress have the opportunity to make a great contribution to democracy and to the construction of humanitarian solutions for one of the greatest planetary crises. For this reason, we ask you to approve the project for constitutional reform which the signatures of support of more than two million of your countrypersons back and that you do this respecting the original text which the Colombian Committee in Defense of Water and Life, the referendum promoter, offered for the consideration of those who signed. Altering the text would amount to the same as failing to recognise will of the people.

The peace which your country so badly needs will require much effort and many constructive iniatives.

This is one of those.
Signed