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Sir Richard Jolly appealed for decisive actions to provide conflict regions with safe water and sanitation
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DAKAR,
November 29 (IslamOnline.net) - In the opening ceremony of the Global WASH
(Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) Forum, held currently in Dakar, Senegal, Sir
Richard Jolly, Chair of the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
(WSSCC) appealed to the world community to take decisive actions to provide safe
water and sanitation to conflict regions of the world.
“In
a world so prone to conflict, let us not forget the actions urgently needed to
deal with the risks of destroyed or poisoned facilities on which millions the
world over depend for safe water and sanitation,” he urged.
The
Global WASH Forum, organized by the WSSCC in cooperation with the Government of
the Republic of Senegal, is being held from November 29 to December 3 with
around 350 participants from around the world attending.
The
Voices of the People
Opening
speeches focused mainly on the importance of providing the world’s poor with
their basic rights to clean water and proper sanitation with a special emphasis
on grassroots activities and women’s empowerment.
“We
can not measure progress successfully unless we use the lens of the target
groups – the poorest,” said Dr. Anna Tibaijuka, Forum Chair and Executive
Director of UN HABITAT in the conference’s first keynote address. “The
challenge here is to develop a monitoring mechanism that reflects the voices of
the people, particularly of the poor communities, who are the real targets of
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” she said, in reference to a set of
goals and targets that were devised to help eradicate global poverty at the UN
Millennium Summit in 2000.
At
the start of the 21st century, there was an estimated four billion annual
episodes of diarrhea, with an estimated resultant 1.8 million deaths every year.
At the same time, 1.3 million people die every year from malaria, 160 million
are infected with schistosomiasis and 500 million people are at risk to
trachoma. Providing safe, potable water and proper sanitation infrastructure
could play a significant role in reducing all this.
The
Cost of Inaction
However,
Tibaijuka emphasized that with the annual global costs of inaction in providing
basic water and sanitation services to the world’s poor reaching an estimated
US$186 billion as a result of deaths caused by waterborne diseases, it is
important that water and sanitation services reach the poor in cities and towns.
She explained that by reaching the target of halving the number of people
without access to proper sanitation by 2015, an economic annual gain in the
order of US$63 billion could be made with an investment of only US$11 billion.
“Today,
the poor subsidize the rich – a situation clearly absurd and unacceptable,”
she said. Tibaijuka stressed that bold initiatives were needed for realistic
pricing policies that would allow water conservation, discourage its waste and
will ensure that the poor will be able to meet their basic needs at a price they
can afford.
In
order for the Millennium Development Goal for water to be achieved, actions must
be waged at the level of cities, towns and villages, where water is consumed and
waste is generated. “The MDGs can not be delivered in orbit, but only in a
defined space,” said Tibaijuka.
Urbanization
and Feminization of Poverty
Tibaijuka
emphasized the importance of focusing on providing water to populations living
in urban slums, and on providing water to women as key policy changes that were
needed in order to translate the Millennium Development goal for water into
reality.
More
than 900 million people in the world, comprising 43 percent of the urban
population of developing countries, live in slums, Tibaijuka explained, while at
the same time women today constitute 70 percent of the world’s absolute poor
and pay a heavy price in procuring water for their families, including their
education and sometimes their dignity.
Official
statistics, she said, often disguise the real problem of the poor in cities and
towns. Sometimes citing almost complete sanitation coverage in their
countries, a reality check of what is actually happening on the ground reveals
otherwise. According to a recent UN-HABITAT assessment of the water and
sanitation situation in the world’s cities, 150 or more inhabitants queue up
daily in order to use one public toilet in many slums.
People
Power
Sir
Richard Jolly added that giving priority to small-scale and low-cost approaches
that focus on the poor and on marginalized communities in both rural and urban
informal settlements was vital in ensuring the MDG for water and sanitation.
“Unless
people are really brought into the center of all planning, action and
implementation, the real goal will never be achieved and it will not be
sustainable,” he said, adding that partnerships require mutual respect and
recognition.
The
actual investment in water and sanitation for the world’s poor actually
“makes economic sense,” said Dr. Jong-Wook Lee, General Director of the WHO
in a speech read by Mr. Ebrahim Samba, Africa Regional Director of the World
Health Organization. He explained that an investment of US$1 would give an
economic return of between US$3 and US$34 in developing regions, according to a
recent WHO study.
Costing
the Lives and Health of Millions
Nevertheless,
over one billion people still lack access to improved water sources and about
half of the developing world’s population lack access to any sort of improved
sanitation, according to the latest Joint Monitoring Program report, the result
of collaboration of the WHO and UNICEF.
This
is at a time when meeting the MDG for access to safe drinking water and basic
sanitation would lead to a 10 percent reduction in diarrhea morbidity and
mortality. It would also play a significant role in reducing morbidity and
mortality due to malaria, schistosomiasis and trachoma, all diseases directly
related to lack of both.
Forum
Aims
The
Global WASH Forum is aiming towards developing a framework for action, or a
‘roadmap’, that will outline the priority tasks of various stakeholders to
accelerate progress on achieving the water and sanitation goals at the national
and sub-national levels. It will also endorse two initiatives to help spearhead
efforts to implement the WASH roadmap: a women leader’s group and the African
Ministerial Initiative on WASH.
Nadia
El-Awady, Managing Editor of IslamOnline.net’s Health & Science section
will be presented with an award at the Forum for winning first place in the WASH
Media Award competition this year for her article published on
IslamOnline.net’s Health & Science page titled, ‘The
Nile and its People: What Goes Around Comes Around.’
The
WASH Campaign was launched by the WSSCC at the International Conference on
Freshwater in Bonn in December 2001 with an aim at mobilizing political
awareness, support and action towards achieving the Millennium Development
Goals.
Nadia
El-Awady is IslamOnline.net's Health & Science
Page editor. She has a bachelor's degree in medicine from Cairo University and is currently
studying for a masters degree in journalism and mass communications at the American
University in Cairo. You
can reach her at:
ScienceTech@islam-online.net.
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