'Sanitation for all requires neither colossal sums of money nor breakthrough scientific discoveries. Using existing, proven approaches and technologies, and for about US$ 10 billion a year – less than one percent of global military expenditure – the world could meet the MDG sanitation goal by 2015. And around ten years later, by 2025, everyone could have a toilet to use. It’s possible.'

On 20th December 2006, the UN General assembly declared 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation (IYS). The proposal was brought into the General Assembly by 48 Countries at the recommendation of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation. The International Year of Sanitation provides the global community with an opportunity to raise awareness and accelerate actions for the achievement of the sanitation MDG through a variety of actions and interventions.

Today, some 1.1 billion people around the world do not have access to drinking water, and more than 2.2 billion individuals are without any sanitation system that is able to provide them with a favorable sanitary environment.
In reality, health represents the final indicator for the effectiveness of water management serving man. Indeed, drinking water and purification represent essential public health factors: nearly 80% of diseases in the developing world are carried by water. The main regulat more...

More than 1.1 billion people lack access to safe water, and 2.6 billion lack accesses to basic sanitation. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) include a target to halve the fraction of the world’s population without access to water and sanitation by 2015. The world is roughly on course to reach the target for water supply, but will fall short by half a billion people in sanitation. Source: The World Bank

The three water crises – dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water – pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival. Together with impending climate change from fossil fuel emissions, the water crises impose some life-or-death decisions on us all.

Unless we collectively change our behavior, we are heading toward a world of deepening conflict and potential wars over the dwindling supplies of freshwater – between more...

Water is essential to human beings and all forms of life. But pollution and lack of access to clean water is proliferating the cycle of poverty, water-borne diseases, and gender inequities. At the United Nations conferences of the 1990s—beginning with the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil all the way through to the 2000 Millennium Development Summit in New York, U.S.A. and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, more...

The triennial UN World Water Development Report is a joint undertaking of 24 UN agencies comprising UN-Water in partnership with governments and other stakeholders, and coordinated by WWAP. WWDR2 was launched during World Water Day, on 22 March 2006, at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico City, Mexico.

The Report builds on the conclusions of the 1st United Nations World Water Development Report 'Water for People, Water for Life' published in 2003. It presents a comprehensive picture of freshw more...

The world is not on track to reach the sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals: a halving of the proportion of people without access to improved sanitation by the year 2015. Sanitation and Hygiene (S&H) policies, backed by sound epidemiological evidence, and supported by solid socio-economic arguments for increased investment, are still being overlooked by many governments. Technical solutions exist, as well as broad agreement that they should be used to support demand. Recent rese more...

'Domestic wastewater management, including sewage treatment, requires support from government, the public and the private sector. Sewage treatment has been seen as an internal household issue. If each house has a latrine, sewage treatment must be adequate. If the latrine is connected to a septic tank, so much the better. Yet data tell a disturbing story of large numbers of people suffering from diarrhea, and polluted groundwater. Research shows that the root cause of these problems is sewage. De more...

'Every year some 3.4 million people, mostly children, die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene. Over half of the hospital beds in the world are filled with people suffering from water- and sanitation-related diseases.

In 2002, participants in the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, made a commitment to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by the year 2015. The United Nations Deve more...