Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
NEW YORK, United States – On World Water Day, the United Nations is highlighting the importance of water safety. This year, the Day’s theme focuses on “Clean Water for a Healthy World.”
According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in his message commemorating World Water Day, more people die from unsafe water than from violence, including war.
“These deaths are an affront to our common humanity, and undermine the efforts of many countries to achieve their developmental potential,” said the Secretary General. “Our growing population’s need for water for food, raw materials and energy is increasingly competing with nature’s own demands for water to sustain already imperilled ecosystems and the services on which we depend.”
He added, “Day after day, we pour millions of tons of untreated sewage and industrial and agricultural wastes into the world’s water systems. Clean water has become scarce and will become even scarcer with the onset of climate change.”
On March 20, scientists, policy-makers, and others gathered in Nairobi, Kenya to kick off a three-day celebration and discuss water safety.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that 39% of the population in West and Central Africa (more than 155 million people) have no access to potable water, an increase of nearly 30 million people from 1990 to 2008.
By 2015, countries were supposed to reach 75% drinking water coverage. While West and Central Africa’s coverage has improved from 49% in 1990 to 61% in 2008, six countried still have less than 50% coverage: Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Mauritania, and Sierra Leone.
Complete lack of access to sanitation to the 291 million people in West and Central Africa was also noted as a particular area of concern, having “the highest under-five mortality rate of all developing regions at 169 deaths per 1,000 live births.”
According to United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “Access to reliable supplies of clean water is a matter of human security. It’s also a matter of national security.”
She recognized that the Nile River Basin is largely affected by poverty and conflict, endangering 180 million people across 10 East African countries.
“Cooperative management of the basin’s water resources could increase growth — increase it enough to pull many of these countries out of poverty and provide a foundation for greater regional stability,” said Clinton.
Africa’s Sahel region is affected by drought. On Thursday, nine countries from the region will meet in Chad to discuss water management and protection against food shortages. Additionally, the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal) is focusing on creating a global coalition on managing water.
“Human activity over the past 50 years is responsible for unprecedented pollution, and the quality of the world’s water resources is increasingly challenged,” said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP). “It may seem like an overwhelming challenge but there are enough solutions where human ingenuity allied to technology and investments in nature’s purification systems – such as wetlands, forests and mangroves – can deliver clean water for a healthy world.”
The UN named the International Decade for Action of 2005-2015 as “Water for Life,” recognizing that all its “developmental goals, including material and shild health and life expectancy, women’s empowerment, food security, sustainable development and climate change adaptation and mitigation” rely on clean water.
“Without water, there will be no prospects for achieving all MDGs (Millenium Development Goals),” said Sha Zukang, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.
For more information, please see:
Xinhua – UN Highlights Water Safety on World Water Day – 23 March 2010
AFP – More Deaths From Unsafe Water Than From War: UN – 22 March 2010
UN News Centre – Unsafe Water Kills More People Than War, Ban Says on World Day – 22 March 2010
UN OSSG – Secretary-General’s Message on World Water Day – 22 March 2010
