World Water Day letter published
End Water Poverty writes an open letter to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown
22 March 2008
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To mark World Water Day, members of the End Water Poverty coalition published an open letter in The Times newspaper to the UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, calling on his government to commit to making 2008 the year to change the lives of billions of people in the developing world.
The letter prompted the International Development Minister Gareth Thomas to warn that the world faces a future of "water wars", according to a report in the Independent.
Download a PDF copy of the letter here
The full text of the letter reads:
Dear Prime Minister,
Happy World Water Day, a time to focus on the 1.1 billion people in the world who did not wake up this morning to clean water on tap and the 2.6 billion people who have nowhere safe to go the toilet.
Tackling the water and sanitation crisis is essential if the 'Millennium Development Goal Call to Action' is to be a success, otherwise progress on health, education and environmental sustainability will be undermined. Each year 443 million school days are lost globally to diarrhoea and 1.8 million children die unnecessarily from these diseases.
The evidence is clear and compelling: investing in sanitation and water brings the greatest public health gains of any single development intervention and delivers huge economic returns. The G8 would do well to heed the development history of East Asian countries that put tackling these issues at the forefront of their national development efforts. In this, the United Nations Year of Sanitation, it is vital we tackle this global crisis.
As members of the End Water Poverty coalition, we are delighted that the Japanese Government has asked for sanitation and water to be addressed at the G8 Summit in July. We urge you to build on this leadership and ensure that the UK Government works proactively with the G8 members to guarantee real progress for poor people on sanitation and water.
- A global sanitation and water action plan must be agreed
- There must be a high level annual review of global progress
- The international donor community must guarantee that no developing country plan will fail for lack of finance
This is a crisis that can be stopped. Please commit to making 2008 the year to change the lives of billions of people in the developing world.
Yours sincerely
End Water Poverty coalition members:
British Medical Association
Tearfund (UK)
WaterAid
Ecolink (South Africa)
AWIRU - African Water Issues Research Unit (South Africa)
Chembe Water Project (Malawi)
Human Rights and Justice Group International (Nigeria)
World Toilet Organization (Singapore)
NEWAH - Nepal Water for Health (Nepal)
UCSD - Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development (Uganda)
UST - Unnayan Shahojogy Team (Bangladesh)
Streams of Knowledge (Philippines)
Nile Basin Society (Canada)
Results (Canada)
Caravan (Pakistan)
Nuba Survival (Sudan)
SHARAN (Bangladesh)
Sightsavers International
Nabolok (Bangladesh)
Results UK
WWF UK
UNIFEM-UK
AED TOGO (Togo)
MDS Foundations (Nepal)
WaterCan (Canada)
Women's Information Services and Networks Organization (Ethiopia)
Geo-Mob Social Response Centre (Nigeria)
End Water Poverty is the international campaign calling for sanitation and water for all and has over 60 member organisations from across the world.