Al-Jazeera has an amazing show focused on women's issues and politics from around the world called Everywoman. It has an incredible archive of shows, especially this one, which I found in YouTube.

This, from their website:

The world is facing a water crisis. It is becoming an ever more precious commodity and the fight over access to it is becoming ever more fierce. The people most affected by the shortage are those who search for it, collect it, carry it, and eke it out among their families.

Clean water is essential for life, but across the world over a billion people do not have it. The global water shortage directly affects people's livelihoods and wellbeing. And it is a crisis that is getting worse.

Every year 2.2 million people die because of unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation. And, according to the UN two thirds of people on the planet will face some degree of water shortage by the year 2025.

But it is women who bear the brunt. Many in the developing world already spend most of their waking hours in search of clean water. Its scarcity impacts on household chores, child-rearing and food production.

Shiulie Ghosh is joined by Maude Barlow who is one of the world's leading experts on the politics of water. In her book Blue Gold she says: "Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations."

The amount of political and social unrest related to the lack of water are vast. So is the intensification of poverty when there is almost no water to be had. And one of the remarkable aspects of the United Nations work is that it has identified the water crisis as one specifically hurting women worldwide. They have not gotten as far as calling water a basic human right, but it's heartening to see how for once the UN has taken the steps to tie poverty, war, disease and famine to something so ubiquitous as basic as water.