4000 children die every day from diarrhoea caused by unclean water and poor sanitation.

New global partnership offers fresh hope

New international partnership is launched to accelerate efforts to end the water and sanitation crisis, but lack of donor promises leaves glass half-empty.

Making clean water flow

27 April 2010

Developing countries make strong commitments at the first ever High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water, but donor countries need to do more to increase resources to the world’s poorest.

The first ever High-Level Meeting on Sanitation and Water took place in Washington DC on 23rd April 2010. Ministers and policy makers from over 30 countries met to develop plans to tackle the water and sanitation crisis which currently kills 4,000 children each day worldwide.

The meeting was a huge step in the right direction, with the launch of a new international partnership to accelerate efforts to bring clean water and safe sanitation to the world’s poorest countries.  Ministers and policy makers agreed a joint statement making commitments to:

• Work through the new Sanitation and Water for All partnership to increase political prioritization, resource mobilization 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.

Developing countries showed a strong commitment to tackling the crisis to get clean water and sanitation to their citizens. Some made additional individual pledges, including Bangladesh, who committed to spending an extra $200m on water and sanitation over the next 5 years and Senegal, who pledged an extra $24m annually. The Ghanaian Finance Minister announced after the meeting, “We spent $85 million to fight malaria, but neglected sanitation. We will now put more money into sanitation.”

These commitments show crucial progress, partly thanks to the campaigning that has been undertaken on behalf of End Water Poverty during the last two years, with over one million people taking action in support of the campaign. Most recently, the World’s Longest Toilet Queue brought together tens of thousands of campaigners across 80 countries to demand real political change. Queues included 30,000 campaigners across Nepal who called for the right to water and sanitation to be embedded in their national constitution and one huge queue of over 5,000 people in Burkina Faso. These Queues have shown both developing and developed countries that they must prioritise water and sanitation and better target aid to reach those who need it most.

Yet, in contrast to the commitment shown by developing countries, with most African and Asian countries represented at Ministerial Level, only one donor country, the USA, had a Minister present. There was a lack of specific commitments from donors with no new money promised or specific, measurable targets actually agreed. This was despite a strong appeal by African and Asian Water Ministers ( 34KB) for the donor community to commit to a target of providing over 50% of aid for water and sanitation to low income countries by 2013.

Prior to the meeting, a new UN report showed that only 42% of aid given to water and sanitation was actually going to low-income countries and that the share of overall aid to this issue had declined from 6.3% to 4.7%. The launch of the new international partnership shows that progress is being made towards reversing these trends but donors still need to do more to honour their promises and increase aid to the world’s poorest countries and communities.

Edward Kairu, Chairman of the African Civil Society Network on Water and Sanitation (ANEW) reflected, “People cannot drink promises, so the real test is whether today’s announcements will be translated into action on the ground.”

Read the African and Asian Water Ministers' Statement ( 34KB)

Read the Co-Chairs Summary ( 633KB)