Impacted Communities Testify on US Water Crises at Human Rights Hearing

Shadow Proof

April 4, 2016

by Kevin Gosztola

In a hearing hosted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, representatives of indigenous, working class, and minority populations in the United States testified on water and sanitation crises.

The hearing hosted by IACHR, which is part of the Organization of American States (OAS), was scheduled in response to the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. It featured stark testimony that sharply contrasted with the bureaucratic statements of U.S. officials.

U.S. officials largely failed to address the specifics of the collective human rights violations, which were highlighted and which led activists to call for the hearing.

After all of the representatives spoke, the U.S. opened with an overview of what the U.S. has done and continues to generously do through initiatives intended to improve water and sanitation around the world. However, this tactic backfired in extraordinary fashion.

Commissioner Margarette May Macaulay of Jamaica asked, “If you’re doing [all of] that outside your borders, can’t you do that at the same time in tandem so nobody falls through the cracks?”

“I literally can’t imagine the most powerful country in the world having these kind of stories,” Macaulay added. “There should not be these gaps.”

Click here to read about how Impacted Communities Testify on US Water Crises at Human Rights Hearing  https://swuraniumimpacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/16.04.04-Human-Rights-Hearing.pdf