As the historic United Nations Conference on Water begins today, the first in almost 50 years, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) call on all nations to radically accelerate action to make water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) a reality for all.
The numbers are staggering: worldwide, 2 billion people lack safe drinking water and 3.6 billion people (almost half the world’s population) use sanitation services that do not treat human waste.
Millions of children and families do not have adequate WASH services, including soap for handwashing. The consequences can often be deadly.
Every year at least 1.4 million people, many of them children, die from preventable causes related to unsafe water and poor sanitation. Right now, for example, cholera is spreading in countries that haven’t had an outbreak in decades.
Half of all healthcare facilities, where proper hygiene practices are especially critical, lack soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizer solution.
The social and economic consequences of inadequate water and sanitation services are also devastating. Without these critical services, people get sick, children don’t learn, especially girls, and entire communities can be displaced by water scarcity.
At the same time, the benefits of access to safe drinking water and sanitation, both for individuals and for societies, are immeasurable. These services are key to the healthy development of children and to maintaining well-being into adulthood. They also offer a pathway to broader social and economic progress by supporting community health and productivity.
From solutions to actions
We all have the right to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation and hygiene, but many lack them. Collectively, the world needs to at least quadruple current rates of progress to achieve universal access to safely managed WASH services by 2030. Progress must be even faster in fragile contexts and in the poorest countries, to protect health and the future of people.
Fortunately, we have viable solutions and a historic opportunity to turn them into action.
We urge governments to take the following actions with the support of UN agencies, multilateral partners, the private sector and civil society organizations:
Government leadership to drive change:
- Develop a plan to increase political commitment to safely managed drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, including outreach to leaders at all levels of government and engagement with civil society groups;
- Develop a strategy to strengthen the governance and institutions required to deliver these services, for example by establishing autonomous regulatory agencies that enforce health-based standards and regularly publish findings.
Financing and Financing:
- Develop clear policy objectives to guide funding and funding decisions for WASH;
- Develop budgeted financing and financing strategies that take into account the needs of different regions and population groups;
- Increase public spending on WASH to recognize its value as a public good; and
- Encourage providers to improve performance to satisfy users and recover costs, for example by reducing service interruptions, water losses, and improving rate structures and collection efficiency.
Invest in people and institutions:
- Develop a plan to build a stronger, more diverse and gender-balanced workforce with stronger skills in the WASH sector;
- Build strong, competent institutions and a capable, motivated workforce; and
- Support the growth of professionalized service delivery, particularly in small and rural systems, by providing capacity building for underpaid and inadequately trained staff.
Data and evidence for decision making:
- Support the institutionalization of data collection and monitoring within national systems;
- Use consistent methodologies for data collection and monitoring; and
- Transparently share and use the information collected to inform decision-making processes.
Encourage innovation and experimentation WASH:
- Develop supportive government policies and regulations that encourage WASH innovation and experimentation; and
- Foster collaboration between government, civil society groups, and private sector actors to develop and implement new solutions.
Investments and decisive action in water, sanitation and hygiene can be transformative. The key to unlocking universal WASH access is right there, now we just have to take advantage of it.
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