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Barbara Frost's UN blog
WaterAid Chief Executive, Barbara Frost addresses the UN at this week's High Level Event in New York where WaterAid is calling for a solid commitment to ending the sanitation and water crisis. Read Barbara's daily blog: 25 September pmThe President of Tanzania, Gordon Brown and Bill Gates were among the speakers at the Opening ceremony today – all urging the leadership needed to really re-energise efforts to achieve the MDGs. While talk of water and sanitation are still nowhere near central to the MDG debate on health and sanitation the Prince of Orange was a star. He started his address to roundtable two by saying people may think he was in the wrong room as he was going to talk about the urgency of investing in water and sanitation for these goals to be reached. He gave a stunning speech highlighting the importance of toilets in schools if girls are going to stay in education and the importance of helping people understand about good hygiene so that community pressure can help bring about change. He said it "genuinely upsets me that woman and children have to relieve themselves in gutters – it is unacceptable." He encouraged others to support a Global Framework for Action on sanitation and water. Commitments have been made by the Dutch and UK Governments to work with WHO, UNICEF and others to try and get improved focus and monitoring on water and sanitation and there is no doubt that WaterAid and End Water Poverty's work have had an impact. Bono was also there talking about the new energy needed to inspire the world's leaders to do more and to make poverty history – one of my WaterAid colleagues had shared a lift/elevator with the U2 frontman earlier and I'm sure made good use of the opportunity to talk about water, sanitation and the need for 'elevation' on the international development agenda! Common themes today were the importance of the MDGs to inspire and motivate, the need for governments, the private sector and NGOs/civil society to work together in new and bold partnerships. Jeffrey Sachs suggested that the Global Fund be increased and additional areas of intervention added to help improve health – disappointingly no mention of water and sanitation though as an eminent economist he must be aware of the vast economic benefits to be gained from investing in the sector. In today's economic climate a return of $9 for every $1 invested is pretty rare – and shouldn't be overlooked. The Swiss Government talked about the importance of looking at the linkages between the goals and how the health and education goals were linked to safe water and sanitation and our own Secretary of State Douglas Alexander ended his intervention with a mention of the importance of water and sanitation. We had high hopes for this event turning the tide of indifference on sanitation and water, some good progress has been made but there's a lot more to do. 25 September amToday is the most formal part of the meeting - it will bring together Heads of State and Government to discuss three themes - poverty and hunger; health and education; the environment. Water and sanitation is to be discussed on the roundtable looking at health and education. This makes sense in a lot of ways - access to safe water and sanitation is critical if we are to ensure that girls go to school (instead of walking hours to fetch water) and that people can live healthy lives. However, we also need to ensure that water and sanitation is discussed as a problem in its own right - there is a global water and sanitation crisis and it needs attention at the highest level. 24 September pmThis afternoon we saw Ban ki-moon at the side event on water and sanitation. He called upon the international community to take concrete steps to make more progress, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. We know that at current rates of progress the MDG target for sanitation will not be met until 2108 - 100n years from now. Imagine having to wait that long to go the toilet… I also spoke at the side event along with representatives from Africa and Asia, read my speech here ( 24 September amI'm in New York attending the UN High Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals. This is an important meeting which has brought together delegations from all over the world and a whole range of actors - governments, NGOs and the private sector - to assess whether we are making progress towards commitment made to halve the proportion of people living in poverty. The meeting is important for water and sanitation. Sanitation in particular is one of the most off track MDG targets and there's a need for urgent action. It's unthinkable that 2.5 billion people don't have a safe place to go to the toilet. We were lucky enough to spend an hour this morning with the Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende and the Minister Koenders, responsible for Development Cooperation. The Dutch government is showing real leadership in the sector and recognise the need for concerted action to bring the poorest countries with the lowest coverage back on track. The MDGs have been a powerful tool for galvanising political attention but there seems to be a growing recognition that we need to focus much more on the poorest and most marginalised communities - those people who are millions of miles from New York City. In the coming years we need to try much harder to ensure that their needs and demands are heard here.
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