Video filmed at the strategy seminar of the Reclaiming Public Water Network, Brussels, 1-3 February 2010.

See the long version of the video

Participants

V. Suresh - Practicing Advocate in the Madras High Court. Also a human rights activist and one of the National Secretaries of People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) one of India's largest human rights bodies. Suresh has been appointed by the Supreme Court of India as the Adviser for Tamil Nadu state on food security and active in food security and water rights issues. He has also been involved as the lead Concept and Programme facilitator for the democratisation of water management in Tamil Nadu Water Supplies and Drainage Board (TWAD) and other governance reform work leading to democratisation of large, state wide government service delivery departments. He is the Director of the Centre for Law, Policy and Human Rights Studies, a research organisation currently completing a major work on impact of globalisation on urban poverty and the impact on the elderly.

Marry Ann B. Manahan - research associate with Focus on the Global South (Focus), Philippines Programme. She joined Focus in March 2003 and works on the commons (Reclaiming the Commons Programme) such as information/knowledge, land and water, particularly on how international financial institutions and corporations privatize and appropriate the commons, reform or improvement of public utilities and community-management of utilities and resources. Her work includes development policy research, advocacy and action, and grassroots capacity building as well as documentation of the responses of social movements and broader civil society including alternatives mapping and building.

Marcela Olivera - the Latin American coordinator for the Water for All campaign at Food and Water Watch. After graduating from the Catholic University in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Marcela worked for four years in Cochabamba as the key international liaison for the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life. In 2004 she moved to Washington, DC for a year to work for the Water for All campaign developing an inter–American citizens' network on water rights. Named “Red Vida”, the network, which she continues to coordinate from Cochabamba, assists water rights groups throughout Latin America to coordinate their efforts to preserve or establish the water as a public good and human right.

David Boys coordinates Public Services International's (PSI) international work on the utilities of water, waste and energy. Public Services International is the global trade union federation representing 20 million working people through trade unions in 160 countries. He helps unions develop strategic plans and helps deliver labour’s position on utilities within the United Nations, at the OECD, in the WTO, to development banks and with other international actors. This work is done in collaboration with pubic operators and with NGOs, national, regional and global. This work has helped strengthen the position in defence of public services and block a number of privatisations. PSI has worked closely with RPW members to develop the public-public partnership policy proposal. David is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation.

Moderated by Jeff Conant