A new international body is to mediate conflicts over fresh water, UNESCO announced at the Third World Water Forum in the Japanese city of Kyoto yesterday.
The Water Co-operation Facility "will play the role of a marriage counsellor," said Mr Andras Szollosi-Nagy, the director of UNESCO's international hydrological programme. "It will faciliate discussions so that the parties involved would learn each other's needs . . . so they do not have to go to court for a divorce."
The forum, which has attracted more than 12,000 participants from 165 countries, has been dominated by attempts to devise ways of averting violent conflicts over water.
Participants in the creation of the mediation facility also include the World Water Council, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and 10 universities around the world.
UNESCO did not release details of the mediation body's cost or how long it would remain in place.
Of the 263 internationally-shared river basins, 17 have been identified as potential triggers for violence in the next decade, including the Han, Mekong, Ganges-Brahmaputra, Senegal and Lake Chad basins.
The mediation body, which is to act only in response to requests from conflicting parties, will be a "keeper of tools and expertise" to avoid conflicts, said Mr William Cosgrove, vice-president of the World Water Council, which organised the week-long gathering.
The body will also provide technological assistance and human resources training in its efforts towards conflict-resolution, said Mr Tjaco van den Hout, secretary-general of the tribunal in The Hague.
About 50 protesters waving banners proclaiming "Water for Life" disrupted one session of the forum yesterday and presented a report outlining recommendations for the financing of water infrastructure.
The 20-member World Panel of Financing Water Infrastructure, led by former IMF chairman Mr Michel Camdessus, recommended that some $100 billion should be spent annually to boost water and sanitation works around the world.
The panel's conclusion that private investment should contribute to the provision of services to the 2.4 billion people worldwide who are without access to sanitation and clean water were widely disputed by the protesters, who accused the panel of sacrificing the poor for profit.
"No profits from water", "water for life, not for war" and "water is a human right" were chanted by activists, many sporting blue headbands proclaiming "Water is Life" in English and Japanese.
A Ghanaian activist, Mr Patrick Apoya, held the floor as a group of protesters took to the stage and blocked panellists from the Camdessus commission of bankers, representatives of non-governmental organisations and the private sector from the view of the audience.
"This is a rebellion and I ask all activists within this session to boycott this panel and this decision until they realise that water is for the people and not for profits," Mr Apoya shouted.
The protesters then left the main hall of the forum and began a march down the road outside the venue, ignoring pleas from Japanese police to disperse.
"You built your dams, your storage tanks, your reservoirs on your own," Mr Apoya told AFP as the demonstrators paraded in front of police cars and bemused forum participants. We should be able to do the same, without corporations, without foreigners telling us what to do." - (AFP)