Fr. Orobator SJ, Provincial of the Eastern Africa province, gave a talk entitled ‘Water has no enemy’ for the Trócaire Annual Lenten Talk in Maynooth on Wednesday, 26th March. Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania are all included within Fr. Orobator’s province. None of these countries have an adequate water supply for their inhabitants. In his lecture, Fr. Orobator explains that water must be treated as an inalienable right rather than a commodity, and used both Catholic Social Teaching and African proverbs to back up this claim. Below is an extract of the lecture, click here to view it in full.

“It may be true that water has not enemy, but this vital substance is anything but ethically neutral. Water creates many enemies! … water and the quest for it render it a highly ethically charged substance with monumental consequences…

“… Thus I believe that what Catholic social thought designates as the principle of the common good offers us an ethical framework for a substantive consideration of the panoply of issues around water security, especially through the perspective of rights. The commodification of water as a privatized tradable resource, the inaccessibility of water to the most vulnerable populations and the indiscriminate pollution of water bodies all constitute a grave assault on this most vital and essential common good and the right of human and natural ecologies that depend on it for survival…”

To see more of the eloquent Fr. Orobator visit our video section.