Ahead of next week’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation in Sri Lanka, international development agency WaterAid urges countries in the region– India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bhutan - to invest in sanitation, to save the over 2.8 million children living in the region.
A staggering 750,000 children under the age of five in the region have died from diarrhoea, caused by poor sanitation and unsafe water, since the last SACOSAN conference in Delhi two years ago.
As 500 experts from SAARC countries gather in Colombo at SACOSAN IV to review commitments set out in the Delhi Declaration in 2008, WaterAid has warned that all countries in South Asia except the Maldives and Sri Lanka are currently off track to meet the Milllennium Development Goal (MDG) target to halve the proportion of people currently living without access to a toilet.
WaterAid and partners are calling on the governments of SAARC countries to meet the sanitation commitments set out in the Delhi Declaration by setting clear budget allocations, providing cost-effective interventions, and targeting resources towards poor and unserved communities and putting in place effective monitoring and measuring procedures at national level to increase accountability.
According to the organisation, which works to ensure access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in some of the world’s poorest communities, nearly one billion people in South Asia live without access to adequate sanitation. More than 700 million practise open defecation and are exposed to critical health risks as a result.
“If the leaders in this region are serious about tackling child mortality, and stopping thousands of needless deaths, they must follow their consciences and now deliver on the promises they have made.” WaterAid’s Regional Advocacy and Policy Advisor for South Asia Mustafa Talpur said:
To mark SACOSAN, WaterAid has collaborated with UNICEF and WSSCC to produce a ‘Traffic Light’ discussion paper to highlight the gap between government commitments on sanitation and action taken in the SAARC region.