Response on Tearfund’s ‘Don’t Forget about Toilets this year’ campaign
February 2009
Thank you for your letters and e-mails about access to clean and safe water and sanitation.
There is a global water crisis, which has serious implications for sanitation. It is truly shocking that, as confirmed by the latest World Health Organisation report on water and better health, 4,000 people, mostly children, die each day for the lack of access to safe water and basic sanitation, most from preventable diarrhoea. This is an injustice: water and sanitation are fundamental to the survival, health and development of the world’s poorest people.
The Department for International Development (DFID) is committed to increasing our efforts to improve access to water and sanitation. The Government doubled funding for water to Africa to £95 million per year between 2004 and 2007, with a further commitment to spend £1 billion over the next five years. We are focusing on the African countries that currently are most off-track in making progress against the MDGs, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Sudan.
DFID’s Global Call for Action on Water and Sanitation, published in 2006, identifies what the world must do to increase access to water and sanitation. It highlights that the UK Government must ensure money is spent more effectively and to ensure the right structures are put in place to make better progress.
The Government is pushing for better co-ordination of international aid for water and sanitation, working together with partners to achieve common objectives. At the UN High level event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September 2008, the UK and Netherlands agreed on a Global Framework for Action to achieve greater accountability and clarity. The UK and the Netherlands will jointly provide €6 million for improving global accountability, and €100 million Euros to help develop and implement country plans.
We support the work of Tearfund and other Civil Society Organisations whose focus is on water and sanitation, working closely with them on policy and delivery of programmes.
We launched our new water policy paper in October 2008 – Water: An increasingly precious resource Sanitation: A matter of dignity. This re-emphasises our commitment to helping countries where the MDG target for water and sanitation is far off-track and to ensure water is better managed to enable economies to grow and adapt to climate change. I am pleased to enclose a copy of the water policy paper, which can also be viewed online at http://www.dfid.gov.uk/News/files/water-sanitation-policy-08.asp.
I hope this is helpful.
Mike Foster
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for International Development
