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Sir Richard Jolly appealed for decisive actions to provide conflict regions with safe water and sanitation |
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.
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