ABSTRACT

One of the most commented upon aspects of what amounts to the privatization of parts of the World Health Organization (WHO) mandate to promote and defend health rights globally has, for some years now, been the growing practice of privatizing access to water. People closely associated with the phenomenon tend to recognize two broad categories of water privatization, namely the 'British model' and the 'French model'. The British model involves privatizing both the water supply itself (including the necessary reticulation, sanitation link-ups, treatment plants, and so on.) and the operation (management) of all of these facilities. In the French model, however, the assets and their management remain under public control. The chapter shows the agencies that were set up to protect and defend health and other human rights globally have themselves become increasingly complicit in trading off our long-term requirement for environmental sustainability generally for the short-term financial 'requirements' of neoliberal corporate power.