We oppose indifference!

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death", Elie Wiesel

We have a couple of naked facts and figures: "Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause

80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses. 90% of the 42,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are to children under five years old. Many of these diseases are preventable. The UN predicts that one tenth of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply and sanitation".

The UN Millenium Development Goals (UNMDG) set the following targets: "By 2015, reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water", starting from the basic reality: "One billion people lack access to safe drinking water, 2.4 billion to adequate sanitation. To achieve this target, an additional 1.5 billion people will require access to some form of improved water supply by 2015, that is an additional 100 million people each year (or 274,000/day) until 2015".

The same UNMDG outlines: "The main indicators for progress towards this goal are:

- Proportion of population (urban and rural) with sustainable access to an improved water source".

One of the advantages of living in the 21st century is the extended possibilities that we, as individual citizens of the world, have to share ideas, actions and global awareness campaign all over the world. The Internet, with a limited usage in the regions more affected by global poverty and water shortages, is one of the most powerful weapons we have for creating the proper environment for action. Twitter, Facebook, youtube and other opportunities we have at our disposal through social media constitute a valuable tool in pushing new ideas and calling for action. It creates visibility and global conversations, pushing ideas right on the table of the world decision makers.

On the other hand, the possibilities for a valuable change and for targeted decisions from the part of the global players are still limited. In the last decade, many campaigns started in the virtual world were not able to get translated into real policies and purposive actions. Beyond data and statistics are real people, with real needs, and the 2.0 might be only the first step from a long-term strategy aimed to reverse our usual indifference. For a real success we have to believe that our case is a good one and we have to be aware that every human being counts. We have to think about this every time we are sipping or wasting a drop of water. It is called global responsibility of individual citizens.

I wish we'll have good luck!

Obama at Buchenwald

Beyond politics and symbolical, well weighted, gestures it is a speech as Elie Wiesel's who will always be the warning clock, because it shows where we are in fact and what we still have to do.

Elie Wiesel's intervention - from the White House official site

"I was so hopeful. Paradoxically, I was so hopeful then. Many of us were, although we had the right to give up on humanity, to give up on culture, to give up on education, to give up on the possibility of living one's life with dignity in a world that has no place for dignity.

We rejected that possibility and we said, no, we must continue believing in a future, because the world has learned. But again, the world hasn't. Had the world learned, there would have been no Cambodia and no Rwanda and no Darfur and no Bosnia.

Will the world ever learn? I think that is why Buchenwald is so important -- as important, of course, but differently as Auschwitz. It's important because here the large -- the big camp was a kind of international community. People came there from all horizons -- political, economic, culture. The first globalization essay, experiment, were made in Buchenwald. And all that was meant to diminish the humanity of human beings.

You spoke of humanity, Mr. President. Though unto us, in those times, it was human to be inhuman. And now the world has learned, I hope. And of course this hope includes so many of what now would be your vision for the future, Mr. President. A sense of security for Israel, a sense of security for its neighbors, to bring peace in that place. The time must come. It's enough -- enough to go to cemeteries, enough to weep for oceans. It's enough. There must come a moment -- a moment of bringing people together.

And therefore we say anyone who comes here should go back with that resolution. Memory must bring people together rather than set them apart. Memories here not to sow anger in our hearts, but on the contrary, a sense of solidarity that all those who need us. What else can we do except invoke that memory so that people everywhere who say the 21st century is a century of new beginnings, filled with promise and infinite hope, and at times profound gratitude to all those who believe in our task, which is to improve the human condition.

A great man, Camus, wrote at the end of his marvelous novel, The Plague: "After all," he said, "after the tragedy, never the rest...there is more in the human being to celebrate than to denigrate." Even that can be found as truth -- painful as it is -- in Buchenwald.

Thank you, Mr. President, for allowing me to come back to my father's grave, which is still in my heart".