Water as Human Right, thus the Government should protect and fulfill the population’s rights
Liquiçá, 05-06 February, HAK Association together with the strategic partners conducted a social audit using the community scorecard CSC mechanism in Fatumasi village, Liquiçá Post Administrative, Liquiçá municipality. It aims to identify the progress and challenges of the water system at the village level and together with the community to find an effective solution to improve access to water and sustainability through participation phase, transparency, and accountability, in contributing to strengthen the planning, investment, and advocacy that is integrated in the village, post administrative and municipality level.
Vice Director of HAK, Mr. Antonio de Limas on his intervention said “HAK is an organization that fought for human rights since the Indonesian occupation period and defended Timorese political prisoners’ rights, and today, when Timor-Leste gained its independence HAK continue to fight for wider dimension of human rights. According to the national constitution of Timor-Leste, to fulfill the social economic, and cultural rights particularly the issue of clean water as a basic human right to people’s live, Timor-Leste’s Government has signed the International Convention of Rights to access clean water as human rights. Therefore, the Government has the obligation to protect and fulfill the population’s rights. However, the population also has the duty/obligation and responsibility to ensure the sustainability of the facilities provided by the Government.”
Development partners together with the Govenrment fulfilled population’s rights by installed clean water system. However, according to HAK’s observation and gathered information from GMF said that their water system system normally only lasts for 2 years as the Fatumasi community has no good management and protection system for the installed facilities. Therefore, the community need to protect their water system canalized by the international partners as it directly benefits the community.
Relevant Information :Actual Clean Water Condition in 8 Municipalities from the period of 2022-2023
According to HAK, FHTL, and GFFTL’s observation, only some community can access water from the Metir Water System due too lack of good water management and some due to the natural disaster back in 2021. Metir sub-village has 9 household together with Bazartete sub-village that have access to water but not everyone. Therefore, some household need to buy water in Liquiçá village. In addition, majority of the community does not have enough knowledge to protect their public facilities installed by both Govenrment and international partners.
This activity is supported by the Australian Government through Water for Women and implemented by WaterAid Timor-Leste and its implementing partners HAK Association, FHTL, and GFFTL.
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