No matter how many water protesters turn out in Dublin, complex problems will remain

Today is World Human Rights Day and the theme announced by the UN Secretary-General gels nicely with the big anti-water charges march. States should honour their obligation to protect human rights “every day of the year” and hold their governments to account. It’s mammy, Bod and apple pie. And the UN says that water is a human right.

Four years ago, the body passed a resolution recognising the “right to safe and clean drinking water and sanitation as a human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life and all human rights”. It published a report that same year putting that in context: the lack of access to clean water kills more people worldwide than violence. In developing countries, more than 800 million people lack access to fresh water, leading to catastrophic epidemics such as cholera and typhoid.

The only difference between them and us is that we’re more likely to die from a savaging by a pack of coyotes than for want of fresh water.

So on World Human Rights Day, where do we rank in the hierarchy? Before or after the people of Gaza? The Rohingya of Myanmar? The children in slavery, the girls denied an education, trafficked into prostitution or murdered for the crime of being raped? The young men forced into barbaric, butchering armies or beaten to death for their sexual orientation?

Around 18 months ago, a survey conducted by Amarach Research asked three simple questions about how people wanted to pay for water: would they pay by use (meters); by flat charge (the method we’ve ended up with); or by increased income tax and VAT (the one favoured by protesters)? Half said they would opt to pay by use; over a third by flat charge. That left just 16 in a 100 who wanted to pay for their water through general taxation – arguing no doubt that anything else would be double taxation or a breach of their human rights.

Which seems to confirm that it was Irish Water's mindblowing culture of entitlement, incompetence and lack of accountability rather than the concept of charges that sent people on to the streets. So if the protests are about something other than water – as the leaders are insisting now — why hijack World Human Rights Day, fronted by the banners of an organisation called Right2Water?

In years to come, when a child looking at Reeling in the Years asks what that Human Rights Day was all about, how will we answer? That we were in a cataclysmic 10-year drought? That six years ago, we were too apathetic/self-absorbed/scared/busy ringing Joe Duffy to join the Ballyhea marchers when it might have made a difference ?

A couple of months ago, a UN fact-finding mission was dispatched to Detroit in response to allegations that human rights were being violated; the water department was threatening to shut off water to non-payers in a city with the highest rate of poverty in the US. In a Guardian report, the Detroit Water Brigade activists were clear about their objectives: "Detroiters don't want free water", Danny McGlashing said. "They want an affordable payment plan and they want to stop the shutoffs."

The Dublin protests also got a mention in the same feature, including the placards denouncing the “Ministry of Thirst” and the fact that Ireland was the only country in the OECD that did not charge its citizens for water usage.

Strife over water is escalating across the world. A survey in the journal, Water Policy, found that half the world's cities with populations over 100,000 are located in "water-scarce" areas. Even where water abounds on city fringes, such as in Detroit and Dublin, cities "are struggling to access additional water supplies to support their continued growth".

Residents of towns in Texas, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador have all kicked off serious protests this year in circumstances of drought, privatisation and the export of water. Ireland’s plan to export water from the Shannon to Dublin has already thrown up stout opposition.

Even without opposition, how to fund such a massive project along with the radical overhaul of Greater Dublin’s infrastructure is the question. Nothing is simple.

Justin Wetes, one of the Detroit activists who flew in this week to show solidarity with today’s marchers has pointed out that although privatisation was banned there, almost half the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s revenue goes to pay interest on bonds sold to the private sector. We have much to learn here and little sign that authorities are prepared to treat us as grown-ups.

No matter how many doughty protesters turn out today, serious, complex problems will remain to be addressed. Among our closest neighbours, Welsh Water is run as a not-for-profit. Scottish Water is state-owned. But the average water charge there is £339. The customer still pays.