does inotify require root privileges?

does inotify require root privileges?

I've found that when I run inotifywatch as root, it sets up the watches
correctly and events are posted correctly, however whenever I run it as a
non-root user (even though the user is non-root, the directory I'm trying
to watch is owned by this user both via chown and chmod) I get the
following message.
Couldn't initialize inotify. Are you running Linux 2.6.13 or later, and
was the
CONFIG_INOTIFY option enabled when your kernel was compiled? If so,
something mysterious has gone wrong. Please e-mail radu.voicilas@gmail.com
and mention that you saw this message.
I am running on an ext3 file system with the Linux 3.8.0-19-generic kernel
for x86_64 and running ubuntu 13.04.
does inotify require root privileges? I though I'd ask here first before
bothering radu.