Safe and clean drinking water is a human right, declares the United Nations.

However,

its such a shame that to many rural communities around the world, this human right is still a myth. Many communities dont have access to safe and clean drinking water. Personally, I have a very special interest in observing the way people access water in rural Uganda. Often I carry a digital camera, to take photos on water access. From my observation, I have noticed that many rural areas have hardships in accessing water sources they often have to walk more than one kilometer to find the nearest water source. Often these are swamps, lakes, rivers, streams, or even mere trickles of water. A

few rural communities have access to boreholes while others have managed to dig up water wells to enable free access to water. During my travels to several parts of Uganda, I have noticed that women and children are the ones in charge of fetching water in their homes. Often, I would see women, girls and boys in both small and big groups carrying jerrycans of water on their heads and sometimes on a bicycle. Even though many of these communities will not complain openly, they often face hardships. Hardships range from the long-inconveniencing distances that people have to walk to access water to threats of infections from water born diseases like typhoid, dysentery and bilharzia that people are prone to due to dirty and unsafe water. Rural people live with and suffer from, but know little about these threats because they are not informed but cases of typhoid, dysentery and bilharzia are very common in rural areas and the biggest cause is drinking dirty water. I believe our communities need more information on improved water access, their rights and health information. Approximately 20% of water systems in Uganda do not function or operate significantly behind design expectations with failure rate high especially for hand pump based technologies. To improve the functionalist of these water points, the College of Computing and Information Sciences (CoCIS) has designed a mobile application that facilitates the availability of actionable and timely information to the district water engineers who ensure that these water points are functioning efficiently. According to Peter Wakholi, the lead researcher for the Mobile Telephones for Improved Safe Water Access (M4W) project, they are monitoring 15,000 water points in the districts of Arua, Kasese, Kyenjojo, Kabarole, Masindi, Amuria and Lira. Each of these water points, which include shallow wells, deep boreholes, protected springs and public taps, is labelled with a unique identifier number. The M4W project uses mobile phones to collect information about the status of the functionality of water points taken at a snap shot of time; data on faults, repairs and maintenance of water points and information on the quality of water obtained during inspection by health assistants, Wakholi added. A member of the community can send an SMS stating the water point with a problem and the identifier to 8888. This information is then picked up by the system and sent to the hand pump mechanic who attends to the problem and reports the correction to the system using the M4W mobile phone. With more funding, we hope to increase the number of districts participating in the project and also spread to other regions within Uganda, Wakholi said during a press conference organised to showcase some of innovations at the College of Computing and Information Sciences.

The M4W project started in July 2011 and is being implemented by the School of Computing and Informatics Technology, Water Aid Uganda, SNV Uganda, Ministry of Water and Environment, Sustainable Services at Scale and Local Governments in the districts. Other projects exhibited to the media included CRIMEX; a crime monitoring tool, the Computational prediction of famine and robust traffic flow monitoring. These exhibitions are part of a weeklong Media Week organised by Makerere University to share with the public the different innovations in its Colleges and the School of Law.

Water As a Political Right

Contributed by Hae Jin Kang Water. No resource is more important to our health than this liquid. Many countries, however, lack this fundamental need. For instance, only 64% of Uganda has access to clean drinking water and globally, 1.1 billion people do not have this access, with 1.6 million people dying every year from water-induced diseases. But why are countries lacking something as basic as water in the era of globalization and progress? Rarely is it because of an absence of water, but rather because of how governments treat the provision of water in national policies and laws. Current policies in many countries often do not treat water as a political right or even a basic need that should be provided by the government. As a result, families, especially in rural areas, go without clean water. However, despite this lack of government services in many developing countries, water is clearly defined in several international principles as a political right that must be guaranteed and secured for all. For instance, the Convention on the Rights of Children specifically states the right of children to have water to ensure their best possible health and well being. The right to water is also guaranteed in the

Humanitarian Law, which ensures that armed forces do not contaminate enemys waters or civilian water sources, such as wells or rivers. While it is clear that international laws deem water as a political right, this view if often not extended to national policies. However, when national policies are amended to address water, access to water is increased all throughout the country, and subsequently, health is improved. Take South Africa for example. Not until recently was water acknowledged as a political right in South Africa, where the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be held. Following the end of apartheid, the new constitution endorsed a constitutional right to water. But how does this shift in the status of water impact health? Statistics from the 2009 World Health Organization report show that 94% of South Africa now has access to an improved, clean source of water. This is directly influenced by the series of national policies and laws that endeavored to improve access to clean water: the Free Basic Water Policy (2001), Water Services Act (1997), and the National Water Act (1994) to name a few. Despite this breakthrough, however, South Africa initially faced several challenges in implementing this political right. One instance was when local policies conflicted with the goals of the national laws, which occurred in the Eastern Cape Province when the local government was unable to keep up with the demands of South Africas new Free Basic Water Policy. Another challenge was when over half of the people considered poor initially were not even aware of their constitutional right to water, thereby hindering the effectiveness of the policy. In addition to the challenges of implementing new policies, privatization of water added to existing complications. Private water companies in South Africa began to impose high rates and began to eliminate access to water to those who could not afford to pay their water bills. As a result, locals in many communities were forced to obtain water from unhealthy and unsanitary alternatives for water, such as lakes and rivers, resulting in the cholera outbreak of 2008. Yet, despite all of these difficulties, South Africa has improved access to clean water for many of its citizen by defining water as a political right and addressing the provision of such in their national policies and agenda. In Uganda, water policies have also changed to reflect responsibilities of national governments to provide water. For instance, water is a key issue that is recognized in the Poverty Eradication Action Planand since 1997, several reforms have been initiated in the water sector: The National Water Policy (1999), The Water Statute (1995), The National Water and Sewerage Corporation Statute (1995), and the Local Government Act (1997) to name a few. Most importantly, the National Water Policy is based on the principle, some for all, rather than all for some adopted from the 1990 New Delhi Statement to guarantee access to water for all Ugandans (UNESCO Report) Yet, only 64% of Uganda has improved access to water, with rural areas even worse off. Why is this so? Although most of the aforementioned policies have been initiated more than ten years ago, many of its provisions are not fully operational, especially at the local government and local community levels. Especially in rural areas, the provision of water is harder to locally manage and subsequently, new water policies are harder to implement. As a result, many NGOs and non-profit organizations have taken their own initiative to

work directly with rural villages so that communities can have safe water for drinking and sanitation. Currently, Uganda Village Project, among its many health initiatives, works to improve access to safe, clean water in villages in rural Uganda. Despite the emergence of international initiatives, such as Uganda Village Project, the root of the problem seems to be in how nations define water in their policies and also in how local and national governments cooperate to improve access. Thus, it is crucial to understand water as a political right and understand how volunteers and non-profit organizations fit in into the scope of the political structure.