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  • 2018-01-18 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé Say Water Is Not a Human Right? (en)
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  • According to a years-old meme, the CEO of Nestlé SA, a multinational food and beverage company that boasts worldwide sales of $7.7 billion in bottled water every year, once declared that water is not a human right: The statement is controversial not only because it stands in direct contradiction to the position taken by the United Nations and human rights organizations, but also because Nestlé, like other giant water bottlers, sources its product for pennies on the dollar, often in locations where water resources are scarce or challenged. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe served as Nestlé's CEO from 1997 to 2008 (he also served as chairman of the board for a time and is now chairman emeritus). Although he never uttered the exact words water is not a human right, he seemed to say as much in a 2005 documentary called We Feed the World, in which he characterized the view that human beings have a right to water as extreme: The pushback from human rights advocates was instantaneous and strong. George McGraw, founder of the water rights nonprofit DIGDEEP, wrote: Fueling the controversy were instances in which large corporations privatized the water supplies of communities forced to sell or lease the resource due to economic hardship, only to raise the water rates of local residents to prices higher than many could afford, essentially cutting them off from their own resource. Nestlé ultimately responded to the criticism by releasing their own video in 2013 in which Brabeck-Letmathe tried to clarify his remarks by saying that his earlier statement was taken out of context. In the newer video, he attempted to re-contextualize his comments by saying that people do not have an inherent right to waste water or own swimming pools — despite the fact that in his original statement he made it clear he was advocating water privatization: In brief, Brabeck-Letmathe's more carefully stated position is that access to enough water for basic subsistence, and no more than that, is a human right. Albeit a welcome clarification to rights advocates like McGraw, it still falls short, in his view, of a full understanding of what constitutes a human right: (en)
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