PHA-Exchange> World Water Day-glass half empty for fifth of world's children

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World Water Day, glass half empty for fifth of world's children
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http://www.unicef.org/media/media_25643.html
UNICEF Press Center

22 Mar 2005

Ninety days after water generated horror and headlines around
the globe, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that 400
million children - almost one fifth of all children - lack even
the bare minimum of safe water they need to live.

At least 20 litres of safe water per day (about two buckets) are
essential to enable children to drink, wash hands of disease-
bearing dirt and cook a simple meal. Without it, children become
easy prey for a host of life-threatening afflictions carried in
dirty water and on unwashed fingers.

According to UNICEF's State of the World's Children 2005, 21% of
children in developing countries are severely water deprived,
living without a safe water source within a fifteen minute walk
of their homes. In addition, a staggering 2.6 billion people do
not have access to basic sanitation. These deprivations cost
many their lives and account for at least 1.6 out of 11 million
preventable child deaths every year.

Our failure to provide a mere two buckets of safe water a day to
every child is an affront to human conscience, Bellamy said. Far
too many are dying as a result of our inertia, and their deaths
are being met with a resounding silence.

This year ushers in the International Decade for Action, Water
for Life - an international drive to bring safe water and basic
sanitation into homes and schools worldwide. Bringing these ser-
vices to the poorest families is at the centre of efforts to
meet many of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - par-
ticularly MDG Four, which calls for the world to slash prevent-
able child deaths by at least two-thirds.

Everywhere, low availability of safe water goes hand-in-hand
with high child mortality rates. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where
one in five children will never see their fifth birthday, 43 per
cent of children drink unsafe water, risking disease and death
with every sip.

The impact of unsafe drinking water, poor sanitation and inade-
quate hygiene on child health goes far beyond the 4000 children
dying daily from water-borne diseases like diarrhoea and ty-
phoid. Many millions more are pushed to the brink of survival by
repeated bouts of illness.

Children forced to drink unsafe water and live in unsanitary
conditions cannot thrive, Bellamy said. But when their lives are
protected, their families are strengthened and their own chil-
dren are likely to be born with better prospects. It's the sur-
est, shortest, smartest route to a more hopeful future.

Since 1990, the world has seen a surge in global use of safe wa-
ter - from 77 to 83 per cent, an extra one billion people. But
there is still a long way to go. 1.1 billion people are still
drinking water from unsafe sources like unprotected wells, riv-
ers, ponds and street vendors. And with demand for water higher
than ever, the scales are tipped against the poorest when decid-
ing where supplies will go.

An average Canadian, for example uses over six times as much wa-
ter per day as an average Indian, and over thirty times as much
as a rural villager in Kenya (326 litres vs. 53 litres vs. 10
litres). And within countries there are equally dramatic dis-
parities, often between urban and rural areas. In urban Indone-
sia, access to safe water averages at 89 per cent, while in ru-
ral areas it was only 69 per cent or lower before the tsunami
struck.

When children have access to sustainable supplies of safe water,
basic sanitation and hygiene education, the results can be dra-
matic, sending mortality and poverty reduction programmes into
high gear. Children's health improves and school attendance
rises. We begin to see the end of social inequities, where girls
bear the burden of carrying the family's water. These benefits
can start to arrive though something as basic as a hand-pump
well at a school, or a home-based water purification system
costing just a few cents a packet. In the tsunami zone, these
simple interventions have restored a reliable safe water supply
to hundreds of thousands of people.

But in other parts of the world, the poorest communities are
still falling far under the political radar, with help coming
sporadically or else not at all. Without the express commitment
of governments at the national and local level to enable commu-
nities, village water supply systems are not maintained, or are
simply not built.

Ensuring water services are shared equally between rich and poor
alike requires a strong chain of political accountability, link-
ing fair policies with good management.

But Bellamy said that deprivations will continue as long as wa-
ter access is seen as a privilege instead of an inviolable
right. She said a shift in global perspective could be a power-
ful tool for reducing water-related mortality and alleviating
its devastating economic and social impact.

Our unspoken belief that child deaths are inevitable casualties
of poverty is both dangerous and wrong, she said. These deaths
are the very things fueling poverty, locking communities into
cycles of disease, deprivation and hopelessness. There is noth-
ing to stop us from breaking these cycles. The barriers are all
in the mind.

Throughout the Decade of Water for Life, UNICEF will strongly
support partners, including governments, civil society organisa-
tions and communities in over 90 countries to achieve safe water
supply and basic sanitation in homes and schools, promote hy-
giene awareness and strengthen national policies to protect the
poorest children. UNICEF continues to lead the global relief
drive to bring water and sanitation to families in the tsunami
zone and in other emergency situations.

For further information, please contact:

Oliver Phillips
UNICEF New York,
mailto:ophillips at unicef.org


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