End Water Poverty: 600,000 people strong

Over 100,000 signatures were collected in Nepal to End Water Poverty.

Credit: WaterAid

21 April 2008

The End Water Poverty campaign has achieved a lot since its launch just over a year ago on World Water Day 22 March 2007. The coalition is now a fully fledged member organisation, with over 60 member groups from around the world.

Over 600,000 people have already taken positive action to End Water Poverty. Most of these campaigners live in the developing world and it is inspiring to see so many people demanding their basic human right to clean water and safe sanitation.

Recently an amazing 100,000 people took action in Nepal. The petition (pictured right) calling for increased funding and a national master plan for sanitation was handed over to the country's Prime Minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, on World Water Day 2008. Read more about the petition on End Water Poverty's website.

Coalition members, meanwhile, are cautiously optimistic that the campaign effort is slowly beginning to shift opinions at the highest level. In February, Japan's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Masahiko Koumura, delivered a speech committing his Government to putting sanitation and water firmly on the G8 agenda this summer, saying Japan "will play a leading role in the international community's discussions concerning water and sanitation."

This is certainly great news, although End Water Poverty demands that there will also be a commitment to action, not just to further discussion.

Download the open letter to the Prime Minister. (PDF 1Mb)

To mark End Water Poverty's first year of action in March, members of the coalition published an open letter in The Times newspaper to UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, calling on his Government to commit to making 2008 the year to change the lives of billions of people in the developing world. Download the letter to the Prime Minister here. ( PDF 1Mb)

End Water Poverty believe that, in the developed world, we have a duty to make this demand felt equally strongly, in solidarity with the billions of people who are still denied access to these most basic of human rights.

So, if you still haven't taken the simple online action to support the campaign, please do so now! Now 600,000 people strong, End Water Poverty has its sights set firmly on one million campaigners - so please join the global movement today.