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United Nations Water Advisory Board

United Nations appoints privateers to Water Advisory Board

May 2004

The United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan reversed himself after releasing a report in April criticizing water privatization. At the Commission for Sustainable Development meeting in late April he appointed members to the new UN Water and Sanitation Advisory Board.    The UN wants the board to “galvanise global action on water and sanitation issues as part of international efforts to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development.” However, the appointees are highly problematic.   No representatives from civil society, labor, women’s groups, indigenous groups or other essential representatives are part of the new board. Instead, the board consists of individuals with strong ties to the water corporations and long term backers of detrimental water policies.

Among the members:

Mahmoud Abou Zeid: Egypt's Irrigation and Water Minister and a member of the Board of Governors and founder of the World Water Council (read more on: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/cmep_Water/articles.cfm?ID=8777).

Ronnie Kasrils: The former South African Minister of Water and Forestry, (now Minister for Intelligence). Under his governance, South Africa opened water management to multinational water corporations and strongly promoted the use of prepaid water meters leading to massive cholera outbreaks (Read more: prepaid water meters: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/humanright/meter/ and South Africa: http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/cmep_Water/reports/southafrica/).

Michel Camdessus: The former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund where he promoted structural adjustment programs undermining the public sector throughout the world. In 2002-2003 he chaired the controversial World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure presented at the World Water Forum in March 2003 where civil society representatives denounced the report’s focus on corporate solutions and public bailouts (read more on: http://www.citizen.org/documents/mythofprivatefinancing.pdf.

Peter Woicke: Executive Vice President of the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank group) where his sole purpose is to support private sector involvement in water.

Gerard Payen: Senior Executive Vice-president of Suez, one of the largest private water companies in the world.  He travels the world to promote the corporation’s involvement and dilute the massive failures in Buenos Aires, Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and Manila, Philippines, to name a few.

Ryutaro Hashimoto:    Current chairman of board.   He’s the former Japanese Prime Minister. Japan strongly supports privatization and last year initiated a funding partnership with the US government in order to further promote privatization of water in Africa.

Public Citizen has protested this development. A statement signed by more than 75 organizations will be delivered shortly to point out the hypocrisy of the appointments. The statement can be found on http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/humanright/articles.cfm?ID=11606.

Here's a complete list of all the members of the Board:

H.E. Mr. Mahmoud Abou Zeid, Minister of Irrigation and Water Resources of the Arab Republic of Egypt;

Mr. Michel Camdessus, Special Representative of the President of the Republic of France for Africa;

H.E. Ms. Juanita Casta, Former Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia;

Ms. Uschi Eid, Parliamentary Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany;

H.E. Mr. Angel Gurria, Former Minister of Finance of Mexico;

H.E. Mr. Ryutaro Hashimoto, Former Prime Minister of Japan;

H.E. Mr. Ronnie Kasrils, Minister for Water Affairs and Forestry Department of Water Affairs and Forestry of South Africa;

Ms. Olivia la O' Castillo, President Philippine Pollution Prevention Roundtable;

Mr. Eric Odada, Director, Department of Geology, University of Nairobi;

Mr. Gerard Payen, Senior Executive-Vice-President, Suez;

Ms. Judith Rees, Deputy Director, London School of Economics and Political Science;

Ms. Christie Todd Whitman, Former Administrator Environmental Protection Agency of the United States; and

Mr. Peter Woicke, Executive Vice President, International Finance Corporation, Washington, D.C.

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