In the past weeks we have received with great concern the news from Colombia about the democratic proess of the Referendum for Water; the Referendum, supported by more than two million Colombians, is currently under debate by the First Commission of the House of Representatives of the Colombian Congress, in direct response to recommendations of the Chief Executive who proposed substantial modifications. These modifications go directly against the interests of the majority.

The reforms proposed by the Colombian government eliminate the establishment of the human right to potable water; they eliminate the recognition of water as a common good and a public trust; they eliminate special protections for ecosystems essential to the hydrological cycle; they eliminate impediments to the privatization of water management, water delivery, and sewage; they attempt to add to the Constitution the statement that “waters that are born and die in the same property are private,” thus imposing an exception to the principle that all waters are to be treated as common good for public use; they attempt to deliver water rights to the illegitimate owners of large landholdings that have resulted from the displacement of more than four million peasants and indigenous people; they eliminate the consideration that waters that flow from ethnic territories are an integral part of these territories. And, they adjust the proposed minimum free quantity of water, falsely suggesting that it is oriented strictly toward the poor, and maintaining it within the current legal norm of the private management of public utilities.

Thus, the modifications proposed by the First Commission of the House of Representatives of the Republic run completely contrary to the original spirit in which the Referendum was written; what is of even greater concern, these modifications serve to reinforce privatization and to deepen the inequity of Colombian communities’ access to water.

For these reasons, at the invitation of the people of Colombia, acting in defense of water and life throughout the world and for the construction of societies based on social and environmental justice, we ask that you respect the original text of the Constitutional Reform and that, in keeping with your responsibility, you allow the people of Colombia to determine the future of Colombia’s water. As part of the international movement in defense of water, we are standing by in witness to any decisions that will be made.

Sincerely,

Signatures: