EU lets down the world's poorest

The EU is failing some of the world's poorest people.

Credit: WaterAid / Caroline Irby

In 2002, the European Union Water Initiative (EUWI) was launched with much ballyhoo by the European Union as its contribution to reaching the water and sanitation Millennium Development Goal to halve by 2015 the number of people without safe water and sanitation.

The ambition was to improve the effectiveness of the £946 million (€1.4 billion) earmarked annually by member states for water and sanitation in the developing world. Although this amount is a drop in the ocean of the funding needed, any effort to increase access is welcomed.

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What happened?

Three years later the spectacular failure of the initiative to increase the effectiveness of aid delivery means that not a single extra person has received access to water and sanitation. Around the world, 1.1 billion people remain without safe water, 2.6 billion people still have no access to basic sanitation and every minute four children die from water-related diseases.

What went wrong?

The failings of the EUWI are detailed in a new briefing paper produced by Tearfund and WaterAid which will be presented tomorrow to EU development ministers attending the last European Council meeting under the UK Presidency. The report, An empty glass - the EU Water Initiative's contribution to the water and sanitation Millennium targets, identifies the following major problems with the Initiative:

• Lack of commitment. The vast majority of EU Member States are making half-hearted or virtually no effort to make the initiative work. A scorecard in the report which looks at commitment to the EUWI and the amount of overseas development aid (ODA) for water and sanitation assigns the UK a mere 3 out of 10. At the bottom of the scoring, Ireland and Portugal were both assigned zero.
• Lack of consultation. The initiative was designed by European officials, with absolutely no meaningful input from those responsible for delivering water and sanitation in developing countries.
• Off track. Although the main point of the EUWI was to assist countries which are off-track on meeting the targets for water and sanitation, much of the initiative's focus has been on regions and countries which are actually on-track.
• Private finance bias. Despite the proven disinterest of international investors in financing water and sanitation projects in developing countries, the EUWI persists in trying to attract private money, leaving no opportunity to debate the need for increased EU aid to the water sector.

WaterAid's Director of Policy and Planning Stephen Turner said: "In Sub-Sahara Africa water targets are being missed and globally sanitation is off target by half a billion people. If this does not improve substantially and soon it could result in tens of millions of children dying unnecessarily by 2026. Although the EU Water Initiative was never going to solve the entire problem, by any standards its failings so far must be viewed as death by bureaucracy."

What should happen?

WaterAid and Tearfund are calling on the European Council to commit this week to ensuring national aid budgets for water and sanitation are increased and to reverse the worrying trend of decreases in aid for these items in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Tearfund senior policy officer Joanne Green said: "The EUWI has been a wash out. Since it was launched, EU aid to water and sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa has actually decreased. The snail's pace at which member states are moving flies in the face of the urgency of the problem. This is unconscionable."

The two groups are also calling for a substantial overhaul of the EUWI to improve its transparency and accountability and to address the concerns raised in their report.

Download the Development Initiatives report entitled Europe’s response to the urgent needs of the poorest for clean water ( PDF 174K)

Download the WaterAid report entitled EU Member States' aid for water and sanitation ( PDF 141K)