Water rights are under threat © Progressio

Marcos Sanjuan (35) is a Progressio development worker in El Salvador. He's working with partner organisation UNES to form a coalition of NGOs, religious organisations, trade unions and community organisations to lobby the government about the need for water as a basic right in the country.

Why is this happening? There are moves to privatise the fractured water system in El Salvador. But at the moment water campaigners say that water provision is insufficient. Privatisation will only make it worse, they say.

Campaigners are calling for water to be provided to every home in the country.

Currently this is not the case in El Salvador, as it is in the UK. Some 42 per cent of the population does not have access to water. In rural areas only 33 per cent of people have water, compared with 74 per cent in cities.

People often get their water supply from standpipes, water lorries or from rivers and streams. Buying bottled water can cost a family up to ten per cent of their income. This obviously has the most severe impact on poorer families.

Collecting water from rivers and streams often has a bad effect on people's health as an estimated 90 per cent of the country's water sources are polluted. Only 2 per cent of the country's sewage is treated.

The lack of clean water and poor sanitation means that 32 children die each day from diarrhoeal diseases.

But, in the run-up to elections in March 2009, Marcos is hoping that politicians will listen to the demands for water to be provided to every home.

'We hope that parliamentarians will listen to us at this time,' he says. 'We have to take advantage of the elections to campaign.

'We have been campaigning for a law that would lead to a better water system for several years, but the politicians have been deaf to our appeals.

'Now we are saying that more investment in water is vital.'

Marcos believes that investment in providing water to every home is not seen as 'a priority' by the ruling elite. Nor, has it been seen as a key part of life to the majority of people.

But this is changing. A series of awareness-raising events backed by Progressio, including a march in San Salvador last year which attracted an estimated 25-35,000 people, have changed the mood in the country.

'Water is becoming one of the key issues in the country for people' says Marcos. 'The way that people see it has changed. People now perceive not having water as a problem which they didn't before.'

So he is now working to establish a coalition to lobby parliamentarians about the need for greater expenditure on water.

But, negotiations are currently being hampered by long-standing mistrust and polarisation arising out of the civil war.

Nonetheless, progress is still being made.

'We are hopeful that our voice will be heard,' he says, 'together we will be stronger than we are individually.'