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Home Introduction Introduction Urgency for action in the sanitation sector
Urgency for action in the sanitation sector
  • worldwide some 2.6 billion people without access to any kind of improved sanitation
  • 2.2 million deaths caused by sanitation-related diseases and poor hygienic conditions
  • most affected group: children under the age of 5
  • progress towards the MDG in sanitation is much too slow, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia
  • sanitation rarely receives the required attention and priority by politicians and civil societies alike despite its key importance on many other sectors and for achieving most of the MDGs
  • the political will has been largely lacking when it comes to place sanitation high on the international development agenda
The United Nations, during the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000 and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (WSSD) in 2002, developed a series of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aiming to achieve poverty reduction and sustainable development. The specific target set for the provision of water supply and sanitation services is to halve the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015.

As the Joint Monitoring Programme of WHO/UNICEF and the UNDP Human Development Report (2006) have shown, the progress towards meeting the MDG sanitation target is however much too slow, with an enormous gap existing between the intended coverage and today's reality especially in Sub-Sahara Africa and parts of Asia.

The reasons for this are numerous. A major issue is the fact that sanitation rarely receives the required attention and priority by politicians and civil societies alike despite its key importance for a society. Political will has been largely lacking when it comes to placing sanitation high on the international development agenda. This has pushed sanitation into the shadows of water supply projects for example, and limited innovation in the sector.

Motivated by the UN's decision to declare 2008 as International Year of Sanitation (IYS), a core group of organisations active in the field of sanitation took the initiative to form a task force to support the IYS. In January 2007, a first meeting resulted in a large number of commitments by the participants from various organisations, and in drawing up a first draft of a "joint road map for the promotion of sustainable sanitation in IYS 2008". During a second meeting which took place mid April 2007, the goal and the objectives of this global competence network were clarified and the joint road map was reviewed.

In order to have a joint label for the planned activities, and to be able to align with other potential initiatives, the group formed the "Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA)".
 
SuSanA Partners