With this basic principle, the People's World Water Forum (PWWF), a non-government organisation (NGO), launched here Monday a three-day meeting of water activists from more than 70 countries.

The event's main aim is to fight moves for privatisation of water by multinational companies, backed by the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and to ensure that governments all over the world guarantee availability of water as a human right.

Ricardo Petrella, secretary general of International Committee for Global Water Contract, said several lawmakers and NGOs from all over the world had signed in Rome last year a declaration that proclaimed access to water as a human right.

Danielle Mitterrand, wife of former French president Francois Mitterrand, suggested that one percent of defence budget of every country should be set aside to ensure a minimum of 40 litres of water, which is needed to sustain human life, per person per day free of cost.

Water activists, including Tony Clarke and Maude Barlow of Canada, Danuta Sacher of Germany, Nia Robinson of the USA, Al Hasan of Ghana and Vandana Shiva of Indian NGO Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Environment, said their mission was to prod governments to resist pressure to include water services in the list of negotiable services under the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

Shiva said the PWWF "has been formed to counter the moves by the World Water Council, a think-tank run by the WB and the IMF as well as major water corporate groups, which does not speak for the people who do not want the dwindling supplies of fresh water to be privatised, commercialised and put in the open market for sale."

She pointed out that the government of Delhi plans to supply the Ganges water free of cost to a French company for operating and maintaining a water treatment plant, only to buy back the treated water at a high price.

Shiva also mentioned of the Delhi government's move to hike water tariffs by five times.

Another Indian water activist Rajinder Singh said, "No single country can, on its own, fight the cause of water. So, every local movement has to be inter-connected to converge into a larger movement."

"No one has the right to steal a resource of the nature. It must remain in public hands," added Barlow.

Barlow said "we have seen the failure of multinational corporations usurping water services in Bolivia and elsewhere. We have seen the failure of the schemes to divert water from Canada to mid-west America because the aquifers are drying up in the United States. The developing world must learn from that".

According to Clarke, river-linking and canal projects on a large-scale would lead to ecological disaster.

The common theme of the water activists' speeches at the inaugural session of the three-day meeting was that water cannot be sold for profit and the challenge is to free the water from the clutches of the multinational corporations.