Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Any Arab NGO among these?

"An alliance of development groups is challenging the European Union and developed countries over their plans to promote water privatisation in developing countries at a key international meeting later this year.

The forum, a key global event which aims to raise the awareness on water issues, will be hosted by the World Water Council (WWC), an international water policy think-tank. The NGO consortium, which includes Corporate Europe Observatory, Bread for the World, Public Services International and the Transnational Institute, fears that the WWC has a "strong preference" for water privatisation, which the NGOs strongly oppose.

"The Mexico World Water Forum happens at a time when the tide is clearly turning against water privatisation and the need to instead support public water solutions is becoming increasingly clear," Olivier Hoedeman, research coordinator with the Dutch campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) told IPS Thursday.

"Although the privatisation wave has lost a lot of momentum in recent years due to the many failures, not least in cities in developing countries, there is still a strong ideological push to promote private sector management, including from the World Water Council," he added. "

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