Access to safe drinking water is a basic, fundamental and universal human right. However, a part of the world population does not have it. Inside and outside our borders, Cáritas Española accompanies many realities in which access to clean water is seriously violated.
In the case of our territory, Cáritas assists nearly 3,900 people who cannot carry out the simple gesture of opening a tap. These are substandard housing and informal settlements (rural and urban) located in Madrid, Almería, Huelva and Tenerife.
Cáritas has denounced these cases before the Ombudsman both at the state and regional level, considering that it is “a tremendously serious situation in a country like Spain, where the regulations themselves oblige all municipalities to provide the same to the individuals and families registered in their municipalities”.
To make this serious situation visible, a delegation from Cáritas Española will take advantage of its participation together with REPAM (Pan Amazon Ecclesial Network) at the United Nations Conference on Water 2023 to publicize some proposals that will put an end to this serious problem.
The meeting, which will take place in New York from this Wednesday -World Water Day- until March 24, will also serve to expose the violation of the right to access to water that Amazonian communities currently suffer. Each of these cases is included in the II Human Rights Violation Report of REPAMpresented to the UN last November 2022 in Geneva.
The delegation is composed, among others, by Cardinal Pedro Barretopresident of CEAMA (Ecclesial Conference of the Amazon); Patricia Gualingavice president of the CEAMA; Francisco Urrutia, director of the AUSJAL Network; the father Fernando PonceRector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador; Mauricio Lopezgeneral secretary of the Amazon University Program (PUAM), and Sonia Oleaexpert in Human Rights of Cáritas Española and head of Political Incidence of REPAM.
Cáritas Española accompanies various Amazonian communities affected by water pollution. Specifically, in Ecuador, together with Cáritas Ecuador, it follows the cases of oil spills in the Napo and Coca Rivers, which affect dozens of indigenous communities. In Peru, with Cáritas Madre de Dios, in the Las Piedras River Basin, it supervises the mining impact that has terribly polluted the river with heavy metals and affects the Yine communities, who have lived ancestrally on its banks.
five years of work
Since 2018, Cáritas Española has also been working together with some United Nations Special Rapporteurships on the lack of access to clean water in some settlements and towns in Spain. The diocesan Cáritas of Huelva, Almería, Tenerife and Getafe also accompany hundreds of people in rural and urban settlements in various claim and advocacy processes.
In the case of Huelva, five years ago his diocesan Caritas began a political advocacy process, which led him to submit various claims to the municipalities involved due to the situation of vulnerability in which people live -mostly immigrants in an irregular situation- in 32 shanty towns. Currently, a new complaint has just been filed with the Andalusian Ombudsman, which has been admitted for processing.
In Almería and Tenerife, both diocesan Cáritas began in 2020, during the first weeks of the pandemic, an advocacy process, similar to the one carried out by Huelva, in various town halls, so that hundreds of people who were , in the middle of the pandemic, without access to it. In the case of Cáritas Almería, a new complaint has been filed with the Andalusian Ombudsman, together with Cáritas Huelva, which has recently been admitted for processing.
In the province of Almería, his diocesan Cáritas has registered settlements in La Mojonera, Níjar and Vícar. In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the diocesan Cáritas accompanies rural and urban settlements located in Adeje, Arona, Granadilla, Puerto de la Cruz, Candelaria, La Orotava, Los Realejos, Guía de Isora and Guímar.
In the case of the settlement of Las Sabinas (Móstoles), Caritas Getafe filed a complaint (still pending) with the State Ombudsman in 2021, after failing to obtain an affirmative response from the city council to bring clean water to this town. At that time, more than 900 people lived in shacks along the banks of the Guadarrama River, 344 were between 0 and 16 years old.
“We have met with the state Ombudsman and the Andalusian Ombudsman to take all the demands of the diocesan Cáritas and make proposals so that clean water can reach people and families who have violated this right”, explains Sonia. Olea.
“You never get used to living without water”
The lack of access to clean water makes it impossible to lead decent living conditions. Mariluz lives it daily. She lives with her husband and her two children in Las Sabinas (Móstoles), the second largest illegal settlement in the Community of Madrid. “You never get used to living without water. We all want to come back from the park with the children and hit the tap to shower, but I don’t have that, ”she says. Some of the families that reside in this town, located on the banks of the Guadarrama River, have a well that supplies them with non-potable water.
“It is filtered water from the river, because when it rains it comes out with dirt. It’s not even good for brushing your teeth, ”she laments herself. Also, it is not always available. With the low winter temperatures, the water in the well freezes and the pump they use to extract it stops working. So the families of the town are forced to travel hundreds of meters to reach a public fountain located next to the Emilio Ferreiro school.
The lack of a tap with clean water makes daily hygiene difficult, especially that of children. Mariluz resists bathing her 11 and 8 year old children with water from the well. “They can catch an infection,” she says. To avoid risks, resort to bottled water. “I have to be with the large eight-liter jug from Mercadona, heating it in a pot and pouring it into a bucket to bathe the little boy and then the girl so that when they go to school they go to school with hygiene and are normal children,” she says. .
A few hundred kilometers away, María feels the same thing: “living without water means not living life”. She has been in a situation of extreme residential exclusion for more than three years. Her house is a shack in a ravine in Granadilla de Abona (Tenerife) without access to clean water.
“Access to water -says Pope Francis- is a right and justice must be done. Let’s strive to make it accessible to everyone.”
Following the United Nations motto on the occasion of World Water Day, “Water for all. Leave no one behind”, Cáritas will continue to accompany this reality and work to effectively ensure that no one is left without access to this human right.
