December 2, 2005

NEW YORK – Global humanitarian agency Church World Service says the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, which President Bush signed into law today, will bolster the agency's ongoing efforts to decrease global poverty, sickness, and death by increasing access to safe water for poor people in developing countries.

A long-time advocate for universal access to safe and affordable drinking water, Church World Service (CWS) applauded the president for signing a bill the agency said "demonstrates that the United States takes seriously the idea that access to water should be contingent on need, not on the ability to pay."

CWS Executive Director and CEO Rev. John L. McCullough earlier called the senate approval a "landmark." He said that today's signing by the president indicates that the U.S. understands that "clean water is vital to life for all of God's creation" and is ready to make providing it a priority.

The legislation, "is consistent with CWS's ‘"Water for All" grassroots advocacy campaign, which pinpoints universal access to and availability of water as "critical to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The campaign was endorsed by the CWS board of directors in October and by the general assembly of CWS and the National Council of Churches USA in November.

The Millennium Development Goals, agreed upon in September 2000 by nearly 200 heads of state, include reducing by half the number of people worldwide without clean water and adequate sanitation by the year 2015.

Access to safe water – water that does not have to be boiled to rid it of germs – is a daily issue of survival for millions of poor people who cannot simply turn on a tap to get water for drinking or bathing. Twenty-one percent of children in developing countries have no source of safe water within a fifteen-minute walk from their homes. What that means for a school-age girl in Kenya is that she will spend hours walking miles back and forth each day to fetch water for her family-often more hours walking than she spends in a classroom.

CWS water projects have brought wells, pumps, latrines and education about hygiene, conservation, and sustainability to people in some of the poorest villages in the world.

The legislation is not a spending bill but it contains important authorizing language that CWS believes lays a strong foundation for congressional spending on water projects.

"CWS supports community-based water systems and authentic democratic participation of local communities in determining national water policies," says Rajyashri Waghray, the agency's director of education and advocacy. U.S. funding for water in developing countries, she adds, "must be consistent with those objectives."

As the legislation moves toward the funding stage, CWS continues to focus attention on water through advocacy and project development.

The agency's efforts will have a global stage in February 2006 at the General Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where CWS will present its "Water for All" initiative. Throughout the assembly, CWS will showcase water projects it has undertaken in rural communities around the world in a "water tent" housing exhibits and demonstrations.

The WCC is expected to pass a resolution on water as a right, which will further enhance CWS efforts, reports Waghray. "The Senate legislation affirms that U.S. foreign assistance indeed should be used to improve the lives and the health of poor people by promoting access to safe water."

Now that the bill has been signed into law, "We may be well on the way to a time when all people, regardless of their income or location, have easy access to a resource as important as water."

Church World Service is a relief, development, and refugee assistance agency supported by Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations in the U.S.

Church World Service