Water and sanitation will be okay in 2200 – Chadians receive 3 US dollar in water aid per capita annually; Jordanians 500
DAKAR, 21 April 2010 (IRIN): In 2000 the world pledged that half the 2,6 billion people without safe drinking water and basic sanitation would have access to these basic facilities by 2015.
Nevertheless, poor countries will need a stunning 18,4 billion dollar more a year to reach this Millennium Development Goal (MDG – 2015 Mål), which at this rate will only be met in 2200.
In 1997, eight percent of overall development aid went to water and sanitation; in 2008 this dropped to just five percent.
This is less than commitments for health, education, transport, energy and agriculture, according to the Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking Water (GLAAS) report by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organi-zation (WHO).
The UK Department for International Development (DfID = det britiske Danida), committed just 2,7 percent of funding to the sector in 2008-2009.
Moreover, the bulk of this global aid went to middle-income countries, with low-income countries receiving just 42 percent, said WaterAid, an international NGO working to provide access to clean water, sanitation and health education.
– The slow progress donors are making globally is holding back progress on all the Millennium Development Goals, including child mortality and attendance of girls in primary school, WaterAid policy head Henry Northover told IRIN.
– Sanitation is the development intervention that brings greatest public health returns, but you would be hard-pressed to find a single donor that prioritizes sanitation to low-income countries, noted he.
Poor people in Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria and Cameroon usually list clean water as their top priority in poverty assessments.
– We suspect that part of the reason the poor are not being heard when they are consistently putting water first, is because it is women who disproportionately bear the burden [of fetching water each day], and whose voices are often drowned out, Northover said.
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