Blog Action Day 2010: Blogging About Water for Women and Children

About one billion people are currently living without one of the most basic human rights, the right to access clean and safe drinking water. This inequity is not just tragic, but is also undermining progress towards achieving all of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 – health, education, economic growth, gender equality; they are all interconnected to water.

 

According to Charity Water, unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and lead to more deaths annually than all forms of violence around the world. Children are especially vulnerable to diseases caused by unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions. The United Nations predicts that 10% of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply and sanitation.

 

The lack of access to clean water is also an economic issue. In Africa alone, people – mostly women and children – spend 40 billion hours walking for water every year, which is time spent away from school, work and taking care of their families. According to the 3^rd UN World Water Development Report, “Water contributes to poverty alleviation in many ways – through sanitation services, water supply, affordable food and enhanced resilience of poor communities to disease, climate shocks and environmental degradation.”

 

“Without water, there is no life,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said during a meeting last month on water and sanitation. “We must urgently work toward a world in which every person has access to clean, safe water every day,” he said, adding, “Everyone should have the access to water and sanitation services that we in this room take for granted.”

 

The World Water Council notes that improving water resources is a critical factor for meeting the MDGs, not only specifically target 10, but also the broader goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating major disease, and improving environmental sustainability.

 

Women and children are the hardest hit by the lack of access to clean, safe water. To improve the livelihoods of women and children, as well as to meet the MDGs as a whole, must involve planning and action in water resources development, management and use. The 2015 deadline is approaching fast, so the time to act is now.

 

 

Keep your readers informed by embedding the Peace Corps’s Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene eToolkit.

 

You can also embed our other eToolkits that include resources on water and sanitation (i.e., Population Health & Environment Toolkit, Haiti Relief Toolkit, and the Pakistan Relief Toolkit) by following the instructions at www.k4health.org/k4health-toolkits-widget.