4000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.
High-Level Meeting blog
End Water Poverty campaign coordinator Steve Cockburn's daily blog, live from the world's first High-Level Meeting on Water and Sanitation
Steve Cockburn
Welcome to the End Water Poverty blog, straight from a crucial meeting for water and sanitation in Washington DC.
The meeting took place on Friday 23rd April, but End Water Poverty was in the city all week running events, press conferences and photo exhibitions to highlight key campaigns such as the World's Longest Toilet Queue. This blog captured key moments, including exciting pledges and developments at the meeting.
You can also read the blog, and leave your comments, on the Blogger version here.
To subscribe to the End Water Poverty blog via RSS please click here.
Jump to: Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four
Day Four - Friday 24th April, Washington DC
Policy guru: "We got commitments for action because of you"
Two cheers for progress at High-Level Meeting
We're just coming out of the first ever High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water. An historic event, with Ministers of Finance, Water, Environment and Development from 32 countries, plus all the UN agencies, and little old us.
Two cheers for progress, would be my take. A real commitment to establish a new partnership to improve performance in the sector, a new realisation of the need to target resources better towards low-income countries, but a lack of time bound, specific actions from donors to really drive progress. A big step forward, for sure, but just the start of the journey.
A big win for our campaign, but more to do.
More soon, for now read our press release (
PDF File 59KB) and summary below:
New global partnership offers new hope of action to end global sanitation and water crisis
But lack of donor promises leaves glass half-empty
The global End Water Poverty campaign today welcomed the launch of a new global partnership to accelerate efforts to bring clean water and safe sanitation to millions more people across the globe.
They warned, however, that unless rich countries did more to honour their promises they would be betraying the hopes of 2.6 billion people who currently lack access to safe sanitation.
At the first ever High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water held today in Washington DC, Ministers and policy makers from 30 countries agreed a joint statement that included commitments to:
- Work through the new Sanitation and Water for All partnership to increase political prioritisation, resource mobilisation and aid effectiveness.
- Work together to improve targeting of resources to ensure more gets to low-income countries and the poorest communities.
- Set up a new funding mechanism to better support the poorest countries with the weakest capacities to develop national plans.
In addition, some countries made additional individual pledges. Bangladesh committed to spending an extra $200m over the next 5 years, Senegal an extra $24m per year. Many others, such as Ghana, Liberia and Ethiopia, committed to raising domestic budgets to meet regional commitments, such as those in Africa to spend 0.5% of GNI on sanitation.
Yakub Hossain, Convener of Freshwater Action Network Bangladesh said: "We needed countries to get together and raise the bar of ambition, so this is an important first step in providing services that have the potential to prevent 2.2 million child deaths every year."
Yet in contrast to the commitments made by a number of developing countries, there were few specific targets from donors to increase resources to the poorest countries, despite a strong appeal from African and Asian Water ministers.
Edward Kairu, Chairman of the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW) added: "People cannot drink promises, so the real test is whether today's announcements will be translated into action on the ground. We need to put the meat on the bones of this agreement with clear plans and new money. Only then we will really begin to see progress in the form of fewer children dying, more girls in school, and communities able to work themselves out of poverty."
Earlier in the week a new UN Report showed that only 42% of aid for water and sanitation was going to low-income countries, and that the share of aid to this issue had been in decline, despite it killing more children than HIV/AIDS, malaria and measles combined.
With announcements on child and maternal health due at this June's G8, and a major UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals in September, WaterAid's Head of Policy, Henry Northover, said it was time to make access on sanitation and water a global priority: "The launch of the Sanitation and Water for All initiative is a chance to move away from worthy expressions of concern to action. We need to see this renewed commitment flow through to services for the poorest of the poor."
Top Finance Chief: Water is so precious, it's about life
Just a couple of hours away from the High-Level Meeting, we’ve just come out of a packed press conference at the World Bank where an impressive panel of speakers urged ministers this afternoon to deliver action.
Alongside the Prince of Orange (heir to the Dutch throne), the South African Water and Environment Minister, the head of Phnomh Penh Water Authority, and chiefs from the World Bank and USAID, was Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former Nigerian Finance Minister (the first female Finance Minister and Foreign Minister in Africa) and current Managing Director of the World Bank.
For Ms. Okwela, “water and sanitation deserves the highest priority from all of us”, and for her “is not something I read about, it’s something that is real for me”.
In particular, she spoke of her experience as a child having to walk for miles every day for water, and the difficulty of being a 12-year old responsible – as the oldest in her family – for getting water during the Biafra War: “water was so precious”. She also reflected on how she collapsed shortly after the birth of her first child, having contracted hook-worms – traced back to a village with poor sanitation she had been living four years earlier.
She called for more money and more leadership to tackle the issue. “Everyone has to work together. It’s about life. Water and sanitation strikes at every single part of the fight against poverty”.
Of course we need more than words. If panel discussions ended poverty, we’d be a very prosperous world. But we are seeing some momentum that feels a little new.
Our campaign also received a boost with agreement of a statement from African and Asian Water Ministers that supports a number of the elements of our international manifesto – more financing to achieve the goal of fully funded national and water sanitation plans, improvements in targeting of resources to reach the poorest people and countries, and a new fund to support countries who lack the capacity to develop their own planning systems.
There’s much these Ministers need to do to implement their own commitments, and there’s much the donors need to do to respond.
The White House has a makeover
The moment is mere hours away...
The Sanitation and Water for All High-Level Meeting takes place in Washington DC today, and to mark the occasion, we've given President Obama's front lawn a little makeover.
The photo, released by End Water Poverty and WaterAid, shows how Washington DC could look if the city didn't enjoy sanitation and water for all - a reality faced by 2.6 billion around the world. It's already featured in major news outlets, but we want you to help us get as many people to see it. You can do this by:
- changing your profile picture to this image on facebook (loads of people already have!) with the link below,
- or you could tweet about it, (try "White House / African makeover? Wonder what @BarackObama would think...? http://bit.ly/9NKb5X)
- post the link up on facebook
- email your local paper's news desk with the link to the news story.
This is just one way in which we're getting the message to Washington DC that the world wants them to act. Check back later to see how End Water Poverty's getting on at the meeting...
Day Three - Thursday 22 April, Washington DC
The South speaks. Will the North listen?
Thursday's proceedings in Washington kicked off for real, with Ministers of Water and Sanitation, Environment and Health from over 30 countries across Africa and Asia gathering for an all day meeting to do two things – work out what they can do better to get sanitation and water to their citizens, and agree how they want donor countries to support them too.
We were there, with the Chairman of the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW), Prof. Edward Kairu, giving an inspiring speech at the start of the day. He urged Ministers to act strongly and speak loudly, representing the issues in our manifesto, the voices from our queues, and the communities lacking basic rights in Africa.
Prof. Kairu added a shock factor with three sets of photos:
- Those from the World’s Longest Toilet Queue, demonstrating the breath of demand for action across the world.
- Those from communities in Africa, including a shocking image of people whose livelihood is dependent on cleaning out pit latrines.
- A dramatic mocked up picture of the White House as if it were placed in a festering slum.
There were no lack of calls to action – the World Bank called on water and sanitation to be put centre stage and the Prime Minister of Ghana (via his Water Minister) said “we cannot achieve our vision of a better Ghana without delivering on water & sanitation”. But the star of the show was perhaps the South African Water and Environment Minister Buyelwa Sonjica who – in response to the civil society presentation – said:
“Action is needed yesterday. We should be ashamed that our people live in such conditions. It’s further evidence of a growing rift between rich and poor. This is a human rights issue.”
She continued later in the meeting when negotiating a common declaration to present to donors and Ministers of Finance tomorrow by supporting all the main tenets of End Water Poverty’s manifesto including:
- More finance from both donors and developing country governments, to fund national sanitation and water plans
- Proper targeting of aid money – ensuring 70% of aid goes to low-income countries (up from just 40% now)
- Ensuring full accountability of commitments – including those of donors.
I wasn’t sure what to expect today, but I’m impressed. Many countries are taking strong steps to tackle poverty in their own countries in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen before. The question is whether we in the north will join them.
Press Coverage
Lot's happening today - with more blog posts coming later - but first a quick selection of press coverage coming through on events in Washington and the GLAAS report:
The Guardian: Sanitation for all - but not for another 300 years
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sarah-boseley-global-health
Inter Press Service: A North-South Pact to Resolve Water, Sanitation Crisis
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51146
Reuters: Water and sanitation will be okay in 2200
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/767d200266c1ab5956e7148ad2f52b03.htm
Financial Times: Study says the poorest miss out on water aid
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ede27ce-4d39-11df-baf3-00144feab49a.html
Day Two - Wednesday 21 April, Washington DC
Today's main event was the launch of a new UN Report that showed that aid to water and sanitation was not reaching the poorest of the poor. Just 42% of aid is going to low-income countries (the poorest 65), with some perverse outcomes: Jordan receives $500 per year for every person who does not have access to water, while Chad receives only $3.
Another key statistic was that the share of total aid going to water and sanitation has fallen from around 8% of all aid in 1997 to just 5% in 2008.
Clearly global commitments to provide sanitation and water for all and those to improve child health and girls education - will not be met unless these figures are dramatically changed.
Todays report gave some clear evidence of what needs to be done. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. What was presented as a problem today can also be a solution - change the way we do things and we can scale up efforts and prevent the deaths of 2.2 million children every year.
We are lucky enough to have Yakub (right) with us, a colleague from Freshwater Action Network Bangladesh, to speak at today's press conference. He powerfully explained what failure to respond to this report means in his country. 66,000 children die in Bangladesh from diahrroea every year, and although they have a national plan to achieve universal access to sanitation by 2013, they lack the funds to implement it.
He was also supported others. The World Health Organisation said they wanted donors to increase their support, UNICEF said more needed to be done to build local capacity to deliver, and a representative from the Netherlands called on Hilary Clinton to fund a new piece of legislation currently in the US Congress.
Tomorrow is another day. Ministers of water and sanitation, health and environment from 20 countries in Africa and Asia will meet to agree measures to improve their own performance, and to send a message to the High-Level Meeting the following day about what they feel needs to be done by others. We will be present again, with our colleague from Kenya presenting our demands, and will report back soon.
We are hoping they have all had some good bedtime reading.
Day One - Tuesday 20 April, Washington DC
This week is the one we’ve been working towards now for months, as this Friday sees the first ever High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water at which Ministers and policy makers from 30 countries will gather to discuss measures to address the global sanitation and water crisis.
It will be preceded by a meeting of African and Asian Water and Sanitation Ministers on Thursday, and the launch of a new monitoring tool – the GLAAS Report – on Wednesday. We’ll keep you updated on all of these things.
Over a million people across the world have campaigned up until this moment, including tens of thousands of you as part of the World’s Longest Toilet Queue just a month ago.
We said we’d take your voices to Washington, and here’s how we will:
* We will have civil society representatives from Africa, Asia and Europe speaking at all of the high-level meetings this week – in all of their presentations to Ministers they will highlight your campaigning work.
* Every delegate attending the meeting has received our international manifesto – signed by 120 organisations worldwide – and our toilet queue brochure.
* We will be displaying this fantastic video, these incredible photos, and these great brochures at a press conference on Wednesday
* We’re hosting a reception for all invited Government Ministers and officials on Thursday, where we’ll make sure they receive it all again.
There’s no doubt they know what we want and how many people support us.
This week definitely won’t see the solution to the global fight for access to basic rights, but it will represent an important beginning of a new partnership and a new momentum. We hope to see a real commitment to work better, work together, and to begin to end the neglect of this crucial issue. This week, we will work with your support to make sure it’s as strong as it can be.
Thank you for your campaigning and come back to find out what happens!