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A major highlight of the Africa and Arab Countries Regional Executive Committee meeting held at Lagos on 16-17 March, was the launching of the Right to Health newsletter. Right to Health is the bi-monthly newsletter of the PSI Human Right to Health global campaign which was kicked off at the Health and Social Services Task Force meeting in December 2016.

Today, 22 March, World Water Day, PSI's General Secretary Rosa Pavanelli states the importance of tax-funded public water and sanitation for all, but especially for realizing women's rights. In an interview*, Pavanelli talks about the major challenges in achieving this goal.

A new report released by the UK-based Jubilee Debt Campaign provides a scathing critique of the failure of PPPs across a range of sectors and serves as a warning against the use and abuse of PPPs the world over.

For more than 1,000 children every day, water is death. Waterborne diseases kill. It is estimated that half of all hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from waterborne diseases. These are preventable deaths.

Five years ago, the town of Conception Bay South, Newfoundland and Labrador, was facing problems with its privatized solid waste collection. Complaints were on the rise, and costs were headed in the same direction. In 2011, the town council voted to bring the service in house, ending 30 years of contracting-out.

For some years now, the PSI, along with 50 other civil society organisations, has participated in an international campaign to persuade the UN to formally agree that “the right to peace is a condition for a democratic and equitable order”. On 19 December 2016, the United Nations General Assembly finally approved Resolution 71/189, adopting the Declaration on the Right to Peace proposed by the Human Rights Council.