PARIS — One percent of the world's arms budget should be channelled into providing access to drinking water in the most parched corners of the planet, the campaigning widow of former French President Francois Mitterrand said.

Danielle Mitterand, whose foundation France Libertes launched an access to drinking water campaign on Tuesday, told Reuters ahead of the initial press briefing that 34,000 people die each day from a lack of fresh water.

"The world's arms budget is $1,000 billion annually," Mitterand said. "We are asking that one percent of this budget be used each year for 15 years to finalise a real programme of access to fresh water in those places where the infrastructure is insufficient."

According to World Health Organisation figures some 1.5 billion people around the world lack access to fresh water and 2.6 billion lack sanitation.

Mitterand's France Libertes aims to reverse that situation. She says that people should be entitled to 40 free litres of water a day and that access to it should be enshrined in constitutions as an inalienable human right.

"These figures are changing. Just a year ago we weren't saying 34,000, we were saying 30,000. It is a matter of urgency. We have to take faster action because the problem is becoming increasingly acute and pressing," Mitterand said.

Just back from meetings in Latin America, where Uruguay last year became the first nation to inscribe the right to water in its constitution, Mitterrand said water, like air, was a natural resource that should be clean, free and accessible to all.

WATER WORKS

France is home to three of the world's four biggest private water management companies, Suez, Veolia and Saur, which are expanding rapidly around the planet.

But Mitterrand said water was no one's property and should not be treated as merchandise: "That is why we are fighting for this right and this statute to be inscribed in constitutions."

She said the French system, under which municipalities contract out water management to private firms, was failing the community. She pointed to some 100,000 cases in France alone per year, in which water is cut off because of unpaid bills.

"It is obvious that privatisation, which is turning water into a commodity, is aimed at making a profit with scarce regard for the social interest," she said.

Water costs on average 27 percent more when managed by businesses rather than town halls, she said, yet wastage and pollution were acute. "They should be serving the public, not acting as a business," she said.

France Libertes finances projects from Mali to Bolivia that stretch from sinking wells to building irrigation systems.

Tuesday's launch, backed by an advertisement that shows a thirsty tongue emerging from a bathroom plughole to lick up the last drops of water, is aimed at heightening public awareness before a fund-raising effort kicks off in May.

Source: Reuters