The Nile river, Cecilia van Zon rscj

Goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals, accepted in the Assembly of September 8, 2000 and proposed to be achieved by 2015 states:
Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.

Today more than 1000 million people are without safe drinking water and more than 2600 million, 40% of the total world population, do not have basic sanitation.

This lack of water impedes a healthy lifestyle, makes development difficult and is the root cause of many illness and epidemics. Children are the first to suffer the consequences of this plaguing problem. Throughout the world more than 4000 children die daily as a direct consequence of insufficient drinking water and water for maintaining a necessary standard of hygiene. This situation was denounced in a recent report published by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

The continents of Asia and Africa are those most lacking available water. The people of Sub Saharan Africa have the least access to basic sanitation: only 36%.

As response to this need, the European Commission submitted, in January 2004, its proposal for the establishment of a European Water Facility. The regions targeted by this Water Commission are Africa, the Carribean and Pacific (ACP).

The Africa-Europe Faith and Justice Network (AEFJN), along with other NGOs, has followed the work of this commission, that in November of 2004 accepted to fund projects for communities systems for the distribution of water.

Those NGOs and AEFJN stress the underlying principle that water is not a market product but a right of all and for that reason:

• The “Water Facility” needs to take into account realistically the inability of the countries of those regions to build and manage the infrastructure necessary to provide water. They need to reconsider the fact that some communities or local groups (cooperatives, community associations, NGO’s, local churches etc.) could receive and effectively use “flexible funding”.

• The Water Facility” should not provide incentives that subsidize international private investment.

For further information, documents can be found in  www.aefjn.org