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The water right as a social and collective right

Danilo Zolo

Today both Palestinian citizens' rights of access to water and the Palestinian people's collective right to the use of its own water resources are seriously violated. Violations are due to the state of Israel that, after annexing 78% of the territory of mandate Palestine, has been militarily occupying the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza strip since 1967

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Premise

The central theme of my presentation is the water right as a "new" social right and a collective right. As a "social right" the water right can be claimed by members of a given community against their political authorities and must therefore be socially secured by those authorities. As a collective right the water right can be claimed within the international legal system by political authorities legitimately representing a people inhabiting a given territory. I am therefore inclined to consider the water right neither as simply an "individual right" nor, on the other hand, as a generic 'universal right', a "right of mankind", let alone a "natural right".
My contribution is divided into four parts. In the first part I examine current international rules about the water right and the management of water resources, in particular water resources shared by a plurality of political communities. In the second part I present a number of arguments for the water right and the use of water resources both as a "social right" of each member of a given community and as a 'collective right' of this community. In the third part I briefly analyse the situation of the Palestinian people from the standpoint of the water right as a social right and a collective right. I conclude by shortly examining some hypotheses of international action that the Palestinian people, represented by its national Authority, might take in order to achieve the recognition and actual enjoyment of its "collective right" to water and the use of the water resources in its territory. The most interesting hypothesis seems to cast the Palestinian people's claim to the water right in terms of a Mediterranean issue.

1. International law and the water right

The first remark is that currently in international law there is no explicit normative formulation of the individual water right and no explicit definition of fresh water as a possible object of a collective right. This is undoubtedly a serious lacuna in the international legal system that should be quickly corrected, as various international associations and movements have demanded for some years.
The first international action to deal with the water right was the United Nations Conference on water that took place in Mar de la Plata, Argentina, in 1977. The final declaration stated that "everyone is entitled to access drinking water in such quantity and quality as to meet his basic needs". Then in New Delhi, September 1990, the United Nations promoted the final Conference of the international decade of drinking water, and in January 1992, in Dublin, there took place the United Nations Conference on water and the environment, which ended with the important "Dublin final Declaration". This early stage of international action was concluded by the United Nations Conference on environment and development, held at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, during which the issue of water has been extensively treated (1). A more recent and especially effective international initiatives have come from the Lisbon Group and the Mario Soares Foundation, that promoted the Water Manifesto in September 1998, from the two water World Forums of Marrakech (1997) and The Hague (2000) (2), followed by the World Social Forums of Porto Alegre and the Alternative World Water Forums of Florence (2003) and Geneva (2005).
In spite of these important initiatives, today international as well as national rules provide no adequate answer to the ecological and political problems due to the increasing demand of water and the resulting conflicts. The global water demand is rapidly increasing because of the demographic expansion of mankind and the spread of the industrial-technological model characteristic of Western modernity. At the same time the quantity of drinking water available to people is decreasing owing to climatic turbulence, ever more widespread pollution and the phenomena of salinisation of fresh waters. Today almost 1,5 billions human beings lack sufficient drinking water and this figure is expected to double by 2020.
In the many poor and weak countries, more than 2 millions children die every year out of water shortage or unhealthy water, the latter accounting for 80% of epidemic illnesses. Water shortage also leads to a drastic reduction of food production and an increase of starvation, and malnutrition related illnesses. Some areas of the world are specially affected by this phenomenon, in particular Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa and the Middle East. For these reasons water disputes tend to become harsher and harsher and often, as Vandana Shiva has argued (3), territorial conflicts are largely about the control of water resources and degenerate in violent forms also because of the lack of a legal framework and regional and international institutions able to settle them.
Some authors, including the Italian legal scholar Luigi Ferrajoli (4), argue that the recognition of a water right as relevant within the international legal system can be said to be implicit in a number of declarations and multilateral conventions. First of all it is a corollary of the right to life stated, as is known, in article 3 of the 1948 "Universal Declaration of Human Rights". If, as stated by this article, "everyone has the right to life", then it follows that every individual has a right to water, since it is an empirical evidence that fresh water in its different uses, firstly alimentary and hygienic, is an essential condition for the survival of the homo sapiens. Of course, this is a very generic corollary of an international document issued by an institution such as the General Assembly of the United Nations, whose decisions lack binding force. Moreover, the Universal Declaration does not contain imperative provisions and lacks secondary norms about the protection of the stated rights and the punishment of their infringements. A water right has also been said to follow from articles 22 and 25 of the same Declaration, conferring the right to social security and health to every individual.
More relevant instruments from a normative standpoint include the "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" and the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights", both of 1966. The first covenant, signed and approved by over 130 states including Israel, provides in article 6 that "Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law" (5). The second covenant, in article 1, declares peoples' right "to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources" (6). Here too there is no explicit reference to the water right and the use of water resources, but the inference is undoubtedly legitimate that every human community has a right to using their own water resources as natural resources. There remains however the problem of defining the meaning of "their own" when rivers, lakes or aquifers belong to different states: without this specification the norm essentially lacks regulating force and must yield, as we shall see, to normatively weaker custom rules. Also, articles 9, 11 and 12 of the above mentioned Covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, providing for the rights to social security, food and health, might indirectly be appealed to. But they too are indirect and generic formulations which, most importantly, are not backed up by enforcement rules capable of making peoples' water right an effective one. And according to a realist - rather than idealist and normativist - conception of international law, normative provisions without administrative or judiciary means of implementation are at most moral warnings, noble wishes, not binding international law. They lack the key feature of law: the possibility for its provisions to be ultimately enforced through coercion.
Analogous considerations hold true for international provisions about the use of river and lake water, aquifers and generally ground water. International law is incomplete even on this issue. However, at the European level - therefore with a merely regional scope - one can think of the 1992 Helsinki convention on the protection and use of trans-boundary watercourses and international lakes that set up a Conference of member states for applying the terms of the convention. Lastly it is worth mentioning the resolution of General Assembly of the United Nations and the related "Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses" (1997) that, however, has not yet entered into force because if has not reached the necessary 35 ratifications. Noteworthy in this document are the articles enshrining the customary principles dating back to the well known "Helsinki Rules" on the use of the water of "international rivers", adopted in Helsinki in 1966 by the International Law Association (ILA). Articles 5 and 6 commit involved countries to the principle of "equitable and reasonable use of water"; article 7 states the principle of "harmlessness" of hydrological interventions, i.e. it forbids any "substantial injury" to the flow of international waters, whereas article 8 establishes states' obligation to co-operate in managing international waters (7).
On the whole we should conclude that there is a substantial international anomy (and anarchy) with respect to both the declaration and protection of water rights and the duty to co-operate in the use of international water resources, and to the setup of remedies for defending these interests and values (8).
Things are different about a much more specific issue, namely the relationship between occupying power and occupied territories with respect to the use of national and international water resources. This issue dramatically affects the Palestinian situation. Here too the normative picture is flawed, there being no international instruments explicitly addressing the issue of water resources. However, this does not prevent us from inferring some important normative principles about the management of water resources from the Regulations annexed to the IV Convention of the 1907 Conference of The Hague and the IV Geneva Convention of 1949, as we shall see.

2. The water right as natural right, as social right and as collective right

If the international legal system is seriously flawed, there is instead, as we have seen above, a number of international associations and movements that over the last few years have made the water right an issue of discussion and claiming at the global level and even tried to propose a normative formulation of it.
2.1. The water right as a natural right. The document that paved the way to this kind of action is the Water Manifesto, draft in September 1998 by an international committee chaired by Mario Soares, the former president of the Portuguese republic. Its key ideas are four:

  1. water is an irreplaceable source of life and a vital good which belongs to all the inhabitants of the Earth in common;
  2. water is the patrimony of mankind, and therefore is not like any other resource: it is not an exchangeable, marketable commodity;
  3. it is up to society as a whole and at the different levels of social organization to guarantee the right to access to water to all, without discrimination;
  4. the management of water requires democratic institutions, of participative and representative democracy. Therefore, it is urgent to organise a "Network of Parliaments for Water" at the global level, to start campaigns of international information and establish a "World Observatory for Water Rights".

In the wake of this document many other proposals have been put forward - especially by trans-national movements, social or ecological in character, such as Social Forums, Attac, the advocates of a "World water contract", etc. - that insist on an idea of water as "universal common good", which as such cannot be owned by private individuals or treated as a commodity. Being a "gift of nature" and not a produce of human contrivance - they argue - water cannot but be the object of a "natural right" pertaining to all members of mankind. This is a sort of "water natural law doctrine" that sometimes, particularly in Vandana Shiva, takes the form of a global ethics with very suggestive religious features (9). In order to protect this "natural right" they propose to establish international agencies such as the "World Water Parliament", an International Fund for water and ad hoc international courts.
There has even been an attempt to specify this 'natural right' in normative terms, i.e. it has been viewed as the possible object of a 'public service' within each human community. This public service should ensure that all citizens are entitled to the free consumption of a certain amount (say, 40 litres per day per person, as a "vital minimum") and to the consumption of a greater quantity at an increasing cost up to a certain quota (say up to 130 litres per day per person, as a "necessary usage"). Usage exceeding this quota should be economically penalised so as to discourage waste. This position, characterised by a clear globalist and ecologist ideology, deserves full respect because of its moral vision and humanitarian projection.
2.2. The water right as a new social right. From a realist point of view, however, we should consider that today fresh drinkable water - unlike sea water, air, sun light or extra-atmospheric space - is not a "natural good", let alone a universal good that can be allocated as a "natural right", whatever normative meaning the latter expression may have. Actually, what is today a vital need of men - water for alimentation, health and agriculture, which does not exceed 1% of total "natural" water - is more and more a scarce, contested and vulnerable product of human intervention. One central problem is how to ensure access to water for millions of people who are deprived of it for political, economic and ecological reasons, so as they are deprived of sufficient food or affordable medicines. Another crucial problem is how to protect the right to the use of water sources by weak, poor or oppressed political communities whose water rights are confiscated by rich, powerful countries and international corporations such as, for instance, the French Ondeo (former Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux) and Veolia (former Vivendi), the German Rwe and, in the United States, American Water Works. Their commodification of water, among other things, is supported by such international institutions as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (10).
For these reasons I think that the water right should not be conceived of and claimed as an instance of negative freedom - the unhindered use of a good that nature made available to all men - but, firstly, as a "social right" (11).As Luigi Ferrajoli comments, the paradigm of the right to life as it was theorised at the beginning of modern legal civilisation - as the "right not to be killed" which is a simple immunity or "negative freedom" - has undergone deep changes and today also includes a "right to subsistence" proper. Contrary to classical liberal ideology, for which survival was a natural phenomenon, dependent on man's relationship to nature, on his own labour and his own free entrepreneurship, survival today is no longer a natural fact but a social fact depending on opportunities for employment, consumption and subsistence provided by social integration. The water right as a right to survival is therefore a right to social solidarity - as is the case for the rights to health, to education, to housing - that calls for significant performance by the political community. It is a "new" social right that is currently acknowledged by no liberal Bill of rights. It is "new" because its underlying need is a new one, originating from the increasing scarcity of the required good, its unequal distribution or accessibility, the contests resulting from competition for its appropriation. As it has always happened in history, here too an individual right emerges and becomes established through social conflict. When deprivation, oppression or exploitation become intolerable, the language and theory of rights provide the most suitable form for social demands (12).
Thus, the issue at stake is a reformation of national legal systems that includes access to water and water consumption among the constitutional social rights, and deals with the problem of how to ensure this right to all members of the social group, starting with the most marginalized and disadvantaged. Up to now only Uruguay, thanks to the political pressure by the movement of Agua y Vida, in October 2004 included the water right within the Bill of rights of its Constitution. At the same time governments should be committed to devote public resources to building adequate structures for distributing water, to securing its sanitary quality, to practicing low costs policies excluding all forms of commodification of the water required by primary consumption for alimentary or hygienic purposes. And they should repress waste, punish damages to water structures and prevent the pollution of springs.
2.3. The water right as a collective right. Secondly, in my view the water right should be conceived of as a "collective right". I use the expression "collective right" - a concept substantially alien to the Western theory of human rights - in the meaning it took on since the United Nations Conference of 1993 in Vienna, and as it has been specified starting with the theoretical work of Will Kymlicka (13). In Vienna there was a bitter dispute between the Western advocates of human rights as universal and indivisible individual rights and the non-western proponents of "collective rights", such as the rights to economic development, to the protection of ethnic minorities' language and cultural identities, to the suppression of poverty. In the light of Kymlicka's insights, collective rights should not be understood as simply individual rights pertaining to members of a group: they are rights that the group as such can act upon, through its agencies or representatives, on behalf of all members within a given national or international legal system.
From this point of view it makes little sense to dictate quantitative standards of the free or legitimate consumption of water, valid for all countries and communities. Beyond the required minimum of mere survival, each community has highly different demands that can claim or struggle for. As Shiva writes, among a number of social communities the right to water is like the right to one's language and mores, a right to a group's identity, and is not simply a condition for its physical survival. The denial of its right to resources and the erosion of social control on its resources and means of production jeopardise a group's cultural identity. If collective identity is no longer worked out through the socialised experience of cultivating fields, grounds and gardens, of crafts, of the transmission of customs and myths, culture is reduced to a "negative shell", where individuals make purely economic demands, cast in terms of mere consumption. If the social relationship with water - and food - is respected and protected in its forms consolidated over time, the water rights takes on an important symbolic meaning that belongs to the group as such and not simply to its individual members. Think of the relationship between water courses and the quality of environment and, more generally, between the humidity of ground and the kind of cultivations, of dressing and eating habits, let alone the identity myths associated to major rivers, from Nile to Ganges, to Rio de la Plata, Mississippi, Tigris, Euphrates, Jordan (14). It is worth reminding that the German geo-philosopher Ernst Kapp, in his 1845 book on Philosophische oder vergleichende allgemeine Erdkunde, had proposed a water-based taxonomy of ancient major civilisations and distinguished three kinds of cultures: the potamic, the thalassic and the oceanic. Carl Schmitt is known to have drawn from this idea his insightful contrast between land civilisations and oceanic civilisations (15).

3. The water right of the Palestinian people

Today both Palestinian citizens' rights of access to water and the Palestinian people's collective right to the use of its own water resources are seriously violated. Violations are due to the state of Israel that, after annexing 78% of the territory of mandate Palestine, has been militarily occupying the Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza strip since 1967. I wish to state that what I will maintain in this section about the infringements of international law by the state of Israel regarding the water right is almost exclusively based on Israeli sources, in particular the documentation provided by B'Tselem, Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. It is a documentation remarkable for exactness and impartiality (16).
1. Firstly, violations affect each Palestinian citizen's "social right" to access to fresh water. As we have seen, this right follows, albeit indirectly, from international instruments - in particular the "Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" and the "Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" - protecting the rights to life, social security, food and health. These values and rights are seriously threatened by Israel's massive drawing from Palestinian water resources, in particular the Western aquifer of the West Bank, and by the limitations imposed upon the Palestinian people's use of water for household purposes. In particular, restrictions have been imposed by the Military Order 92 of 1967, that prohibited Palestinians from building, possessing or managing any water infrastructure without a special permit by military authority (in 1982 this authority has been replaced by the Israeli Water Company, Mekorot). During various decades only very few permissions have been granted to Palestinians, and in any case their wells must not be over 140 meters deep, whereas the Israeli ones can even reach 800 meters (17). Moreover, drawing quotas have been established, wells and springs have been expropriated or declared absentee property, irrigation in the afternoon has been forbidden, charges for the use of water are exactly the same for Israeli and Palestinians in spite of their very different social and economic conditions (18). As a result, with respect to the total consumption of water, an Israeli consumes an average 370 cubic meters per year, whereas a Palestinian uses from 107 to 156. In addition, the many hundreds settlements within the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza definitely contribute to violate - in some cases to nullify - Palestinians' social right to water. Israeli settlers use between 640 and 1.480 cubic meters of water per capita per year. Today in the West Bank only 5% of the land cultivated by Palestinians is irrigated (no more than it was in 1967), whereas about 70% of the areas cultivated by Israeli settlers is irrigated (19).
2. Secondly, violations affect the Palestinian people's collective right to the use of national and international water sources. This right is established by customary rules of general international law dating back to the "Helsinki regulations" of 1966 and the "Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Water Courses", of 1997 (20). On the basis of article 6 of the Convention, the state of Israel has a duty to use international waters - shared in this case with the Palestinian people - according to the principle of each state's "limited sovereignty" on international water resources. This principle requires that each state should make an "equitable and reasonable use of waters", should not endanger the quality and flow of the waters shared with other states, should co-operate in managing waters and keep the other states informed about its water policy. Actually Israel never consulted Palestinian authorities, has always made unilateral decisions and today meets 25.3% of its water demands by drawing water from the West Bank aquifers. Overall 85% of Palestinian water is being used by Israelis, whereas Palestinians are not allowed to use the water of Jordan River and Yarmuh. However, Jordan River water is polluted because Israel is pouring salt-water from the area of Lake Tiberias in the lower Jordan River. Moreover, the extraction of water from the Lake Tiberias through the National Water Carrier - the huge water conduct going from Jordan to the desert of Negev - considerably reduced the quantity of water carried by the Jordan River (21).
3. Thirdly, violations affect the rights acknowledged to the Palestinian people, qua subject to military occupation, by the international humanitarian law of war established by the "Hague Regulations" of 1907 (22) and the IV Geneva Convention of 1949 (23). In the light of these rules the occupying state does not acquire sovereign rights on the occupied territory and its natural resources. The occupier wages a merely de facto authority, in a situation which is by definition temporary. Within this normative framework article 43 of the "Hague Regulations"prevented the state of Israel, qua occupying state, from altering the legislation in effect prior to occupation. But the military orders issued by Israeli authorities regarding water resources and supply in the occupied territories deeply changed the existing legal framework. Moreover, the "Hague Regulations" distinguish between "ordinary" property and "estate" property. The distinction is highly significant for it imposes limitations on the exploitation of estate property by the occupying state. The latter is only warranted a de facto authority on ordinary property for military uses but not on estate property, which surely includes the aquifers of the West Bank and Gaza (24). Lastly, article 27 of the fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the occupying state from discriminating in any way between residents of the occupied territories. Instead, with respect to the quantity of water supplied to settlers and the regularity of this supply, the rules established by Israeli authorities sharply discriminate against the Palestinian population, especially in summer. It is worth mentioning that the United Nations Security Council, also on the basis of some resolutions of the General Assembly, has been very clear in condemning the illegal exploitation of the Palestinians' water resources by the state of Israel (25).
4. It must be added that the Palestinian people's water right today is further violated by the building of the separation barrier in the West Bank. On this it is enough to quote sections 293-297 of the document presented in January 2004 by the Palestinian delegation to the International Court of Justice, that had been asked by the General Assembly of the United Nations to give an opinion about the legality of building the Wall and, as is well known, had ruled that it seriously breaches international law. The building of the Wall - we read in the document - is deeply affecting the communities living near the Wall or between the Wall and the Green Line. In some cases the wall separates farmers from water sources because, being within or beyond the wall, they cannot use them. When the Western section of the Wall has been completed the yearly agricultural product of the West Bank is expected to fall by about 23%, and to fall by about 42% when also the Eastern section has been finished. Moreover this section will separate the Palestinian people from the Jordan River valley and the Dead Sea, making the agricultural use of these possible water resources impossible for good (26).

4. The water right of the Palestinian people as a Mediterranean question

Are there any realistic ways for the Palestinian people to claim its water right and achieve its effective protection? Of course, the water right is but one aspect - though a very relevant one - of the conflict for freeing the Palestinian people from occupation and oppression it has been suffering for decades. The problem of water cannot be resolved without resolving, at the same time, the problem of a Palestinian state, of its full independence, integrity and territorial continuity, of the liberation of the Gaza strip and the whole West Bank from the Israeli settlements, still steadily and illegally expanding, in spite of any rhetorical Road Map. Moreover, the problem of water cannot be resolved without a reasonable solution of the problem of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees. But we can at least hint at some specific action that might be taken in the hope that the road to peace may become less difficult.
A first way is an energetic participation by representatives of the Palestinian people in the actions that the world water movement is undertaking with increasing success, starting with the World Forums for water. Might the next world water Forum be held in Ramallah?
Another open option, of course, is resorting to international institutions, starting with the General Assembly of the United Nations and the Security Council. One might try an action similar to the one that led to an important symbolic victory of the Palestinian people on the issue of the Wall: asking for an opinion by the International Court of Justice of the United Nations. But, it is an easy prediction, once again one could not achieve much more than a symbolic success. Moreover, the Security Council is conditioned by the veto power of the United States that, with very few exceptions, have always unilaterally defended Israeli interests at the cost of the Palestinian ones.
An interesting and perhaps more promising option might be to cast the "Palestinian question" - to put it in the phrase of Edward Said (27) - in terms of a "Mediterranean question", both in a general meaning and in the specific meaning of the problem of water. By the next twenty years each inhabitant of North Africa and the Middle East, including Israel, will have 80% less water available. Domestic water resources for each Mediterranean country are in average 985 cubic meters per year, but they are distributed very unequally between the North (74%), the East (21%) and the South (5%). The richest countries in terms of water resources (France, Italy, Turkey, the countries of the former Yugoslavia) command more than two thirds of the water resources of the whole region (28). If water availability is expressed as a value per capita per year, the scenario becomes even more alarming: from less than 100 cubic metres per year in the Gaza strip and the isle of Malta to more than 10,000 cubic metres per year in Albania and the former Yugoslavia. On a total of 25 Mediterranean countries, 8, with a total population of 115 millions, are under the estimated critical threshold (1,000 cubic metres per person per year). In Israel, Jordan, Libya, Malta, the Palestinian Territories and Tunisia water resources are already beneath the estimated threshold of water poverty (500 cubic metres per person per year) (29).
If this is a reliable picture, it seems clear that the community of the Mediterranean peoples is the first agent that should deal with the problems of the water right of the Palestinian people and the conflict with the state of Israel, and try to cast and resolve it within the framework of the general water problems affecting the whole region. The Mediterranean area is not simply a geographic expression. There exists and is active, in spite of its serious limitations, the programme of Euro-Mediterranean co-operation started in Barcelona in 1995. By 2010 this area will become a Zone of free exchange (Euromed), which is meant to promote the economic - as well as cultural, social and human - development of the region (30). The Euro-Mediterranean co-operation includes the question of water and through the "Meda Water" programme has promoted and financed a number of initiatives and projects. In 1996 there was, in Marseille, the first "Euro-Mediterranean Conference on the Water Local Management", and in 1997, in Napoli, has been approved the Euro-Mediterranean Information System concerning Water (SEMIDE/EMWIS). Finally, in 1999, Algeria and Italy, in co-operation with the European Commission, organized in Turin the second Water Euro-Mediterranean Conference.
Within this context it might be sensible to try to activate the Euro-Mediterranean political institutions, first of all the European Parliament, in order to promote a "Permanent Mediterranean Water Conference" and to establish a "Mediterranean Water Authority" on the base of the numerous existing documents, such as the "Mediterranean Water Charter", of 1992. The question of water might open the road of a fair and sustainable management of all the Mediterranean collective resources. More generally, the Palestinian people - on the issue of water, as well as others - might undertake to promote a Euro-Mediterranean mobilisation, involving the public opinion and the civic energy present on all the Mediterranean shores, and opposing any attempt to transform the Mediterranean sea and the Middle East into an area subordinated to the hegemonic strategies of the Atlantic empire, as planned by the United States strategy of the "Broader Middle East".

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Notes

*. Ramallah, 2-4 May 2005.
1. Especially in "Agenda 21", chapter 18. It indicated integrated measures for developing, managing and using water resources, and laid down a detail programme concerning the urban use of water, the protection of eco-systems, of water resources and quality, aiming at securing water as a necessary good for health, for abating poverty, for making irrigation, hence food production, possible.
2. The Forum was organised by the "World Water Council", established in 1994 by the World Bank with the help of some governments and major corporations. In the same period there has been established the "Global Water Partnership", meant to promote the meeting of public authorities and private investors.
3. See V. Shiva, Water Wars: Privatisation, Pollution and Profit, Cambridge (Mass.): South End Press, 2002, passim.
4. See L. Ferrajoli, L'acqua come bene comune e il diritto all'acqua come diritto fondamentale, International Conference on the Water Right, Gorizia, February 8, 2003.
5. See the "International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights", December 16, 1966.
6. See the "International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights", December 16, 1966.
7. See Al-Qaryouti, B., Le risorse idriche nel diritto internazionale, con particolare riferimento alla Palestina, Firenze: Edizioni Cultura della Pace, 1999, passim.
8. Cf. V. Shiva, Water Wars, It. tr. Milano: Feltrinelli, 2003, pp. 33-50.
9. Ibid., pp. 49-50.
10. Ibid., pp. 10, 95-112. See also M. Laimé, Dossier de l'eau. Pénurie, pollution, corruption, Paris: Seuil, 2003.
11. I use the former phrase according to Thomas Marshall's taxonomy, that distinguished between civil rights, political rights and social rights; see T.H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class, in T.H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship and Social Development, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964, pp. 78-9.
12. See L. Ferrajoli, op. cit., passim.
13. See W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989; cf. also A. Facchi, I diritti nell'Europa multiculturale, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2001, pp. 21-36. For the contrary view see J. Habermas, Kampf um Anerkennung in der demokratischen Rechtsstaat, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996.
14. Cf. V. Shiva, Water Wars, It. tr. cit., p. 12.
15. See C. Schmitt, Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1954. For Kapp the world history begins with the potamic civilisation, i.e. the river civilisation of Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians that flourished in the Mesopotamian territory between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and along the Nile. There follows the thalassic civilisation: the civilisations of inner seas and the Mediterranean area. The Greek-Roman antiquity and the Mediterranean Middle Age fall into it. Finally, the discovery of America and the circumnavigation of the Earth led to the 'oceanic' civilisation: heralded by Iberian peoples, it was to be - and is still - dominated by Anglo-Saxon peoples.
16. See: B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Disputed Waters: Israel's Responsibility for the Water Shortage in the Occupied Territories, ed. by Y. Lein, N. Abu-Rokaya and M. J'bara-Tibi, September 1998; B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, The Water Crisis in the Occupied Territories, January 2005, ibid.; see also N.D. Baddour, Occupational Hazard: Slippery When Wet.
17. Cf. V. Shiva, Water Wars, It. tr. cit., pp. 85-6.
18. See M. Canepa, Tutto comincia dall'acqua, "Limes", 1 (2001), pp. 191-2.
19. See J. Isaac and W. Sabbah, Water Resources and Irrigated Agriculture in the West Bank, Jerusalem: Applies Research Institute, 1998, pp. iii-iv; see also V. Shiva, Water Wars, It. tr. cit., pp. 84-6.
20. On customary international rules see the historical reconstruction in V. Shiva, Water Wars, It. tr. cit., pp. 88-94.
21. Cf. J. Isaac and W. Sabbah, Water Resources and Irrigated Agriculture in the West Bank, cit., p. iii.
22. The "Regulations" are annexed to the Hague Convention IV: The Laws and Customs of War on Land, of the Second Peace Conference at The Hague, October 1907, that entered into force in January 1910,.
23. The text of the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the "Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War", August 12, 1949, is available in the topic War, Law, and Global Order.
24. Article 55 of the "Regulations" annexed to the IV Hague Convention of 1907 provides that: "The occupying state shall be regarded as an administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct"; see Med Intelligence, L'eau en Palestine, ed. by J.-M. Staebler, December 2000; U-blog, Eau, ed. by S. Mansour.
25. In 1979, with Resolution 446, the Security Council established a Committee meant "carefully to study and examine the diminution of natural resources, in particular water resources in the Occupied Territories, in order to ensure the protection of the Territories placed under occupation". The recommendations of this committee were approved by the Security Council with Resolution 465 of 1980. The studies of the committee had established that "changes caused by the state of Israel in the occupied territories, including Jerusalem, constitute a breach of the IV Geneva Convention and the relevant decisions made by the Security Council about such problem". The other major Resolutions of the Security Council concerning Palestine and the Occupied Territories are the following: 237 and 242 of 1967; 252 of 1968; 267 and 271 of 1969; 338, 339 and 340 of 1973; 298 of 1976.
26. See: International Court of Justice, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Request for an Advisory Opinion). Written Statement submitted by Palestine, 30 January 2004, sections 293-297. On this see also: N.D. Baddour, Occupational Hazard: Slippery When Wet, cit., passim; A.R. Tamini, Water wall, August 2004.
27. See E. Said, The Question of Palestine, New York: Vintage Books Edition, 1992.
28. Cf. M. Canepa, Tutto comincia dall'acqua, cit., pp. 185-92.
29. Ibid., p. 186.
30. See R. Pepicelli, 2010, un nuovo ordine mediterraneo?, Catania: Mesogea, 2004.