UN: Lack of political will behind poor access to sanitation
By PURPLE S. ROMERO
abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak
The United Nations (UN) talks toilet in celebration of World Water Day today.
The UN, in a fact sheet prepared with the World Health Organization (WHO), said that the lack of access to toilets has prevented 2.6 billion people around the world from attending schools and working better.
For children, this has prevented them from reaching their fifth birthday.
Hence, the UN gave this year’s World Water Day the theme “Sanitation Matters!” to urge nations to prioritize basic sanitation and work together in securing each living person in the planet a toilet by year 2025.
But how does the lack of toilets lead to water scarcity?
In the updated 2008 Advocacy Guide for Water for Life, WHO and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) explained that accumulated waste both from human beings and animals contaminate rivers and other bodies of water, shirking them of nutrients and rendering them lifeless.
Dirty water
The contamination of water sources, however, has ripple effects: untreated wastewater and excreta could seep into fruits, vegetables, be eaten by shellfish, and thus enter the food chain. Dirty water also becomes an ideal home for flies and other disease-spreading organisms.
In 2004, WHO reported that 1.8 million die annually from diarrhea and related diseases.
Parasitic infections such as Ascariasis also caused 600,000 deaths, while around six million people went blind from trachoma infection.
WHO and UNICEF added that while sanitation covers a lot of different aspects, it is imperative that developing countries focus first on improving excreta management in each household to increase universal access to basic sanitation.
The UN tried to raise awareness on this issue yesterday through its program “Stand Up for Those Who Can’t Sit Down,” where people were encouraged to step in the long line for the toilet in Central Park West, New York.
The long line served as a symbol for the number of people who could not go to work, study, or even live because of poor sanitation and hygiene.
Lack of political will
This year, 2008, has been recognized as the International Year of Sanitation to expedite efforts for proper sanitation facilities. Prior to this, however, access to basic sanitation has been embedded in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) .
Lack of toilets has far-reaching effects on survival, especially for women. The UN reported in November 2007 that girls and women became more prone to violent attacks for they are forced to defecate in isolated areas and only during nighttime.
The UN added that girls in their pubescent stage would also be able to go on with their education better if schools would provide decent sanitation facilities. Girls who do not have facilities for proper hygiene easily catch infections that cause sickness and even demise.
According to the MDG, nations should have halved the 2.6 billion number of people who do not have decent toilet in their homes by 2015. There has been moderate progress. From 1990 to 2004, more than 1.2 billion people have been provided with toilets.
One of the countries which bridged the gap successfully is Thailand. In 2005, more than 98 percent of the population had toilets or latrines.
However, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that much is still to be done. In his message for the World Water Day today, he said that the lack of political will is the ‘biggest culprit’ behind the global inability to meet the MDG of halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation.
He stated that if countries would not accelerate actions, 2.1 billion people will still lack basic sanitation come 2015 and sub-Saharan Africa will fail to reach the target until 2076.
Call for investment
Ban Ki-moon urged governments to invest in sanitation. He explained that for each dollar given for decent sanitation, countries would reap $7 from each individual who has become productive due to his access to sanitation.
The UN said that an annual investment of $10 billion is enough to secure each family a toilet within two or three decades.
It added that this amount is less than “one per cent of world military funding in 2005, one-third of the estimated global expenses on bottled water, or about as much as Europeans spend on ice cream each year.”
