WASH is water supply, sanitation and hygiene. There is a water and sanitation crisis. Across the world nearly 900 million people do not have access to safe water and 2.6 billion people live without adequate sanitation. It is a silent crisis, because it affects primarily those who have the least power to speak up: women, children, and those living in extreme poverty.
Every year, 1.4 million children die from diarrhoea directly caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation, and hundreds of millions miss school as a result of being ill. Adults also miss work through illness, and women are forced to spend hours hauling water back from faraway wells which often contain unsafe water. Improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene is crucial for human and economic development.
Click here to read more about how inadequate WASH is holding back development.
WASHwatch.org is concerned with the potential for governments to make progress in providing water and sanitation for their citizens, through a favourable policy environment backed by the necessary finance. Therefore, the core focus of WASHwatch.org is monitoring progress on policies linked to political declarations, and government budgetary allocations over time. However, it is also important to be able to know what progress is being made in extending services to the unserved, i.e. what proportion of a country's citizens have access to WASH and how this is this changing over time.
There are a number of ways to measure access, and governments often use a combination of databases and household surveys. These surveys are usually carried out by each government in their own way, with different definitions and parameters, which means that the results are usually not comparable across countries. In order to overcome this problem, the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP) collates government surveys and standardises them in order to produce comparable figures.
JMP is the official United Nations mechanism tasked with monitoring progress towards the Millennium Development Goals' (MDGs) drinking water and sanitation target. To download the latest JMP report, tables and graphs of the comparable data, or for more information on the JMP method, visit www.wssinfo.org.
WASHwatch.org shows JMP data on its country pages because it is comparable across countries. Many Governments prefer to quote their latest household surveys in their own documentation – the best source of this information is the website of the national statistics bureau or equivalent. Information about the latest surveys can also often be found through the Household Survey Network - www.ihsn.org
For a more detailed exploration of issues around monitoring access to water and sanitation, click here.
In the developing world nearly 900 million people do not have access to safe water and 2.6 billion people live without adequate sanitation. The lack of these basic services, along with poor hygiene, causes the spread of diseases which claim the lives of thousands of young children every day.
Diarrhoea is the second biggest killer of children in the world, claiming some 1.6 million lives every year, and poor WASH directly causes 9 in 10 of these deaths. There are approximately four billion cases of diarrhoea each year; it is mainly spread by pathogens from human waste being transferred from people's hands to their mouths, or through drinking water contaminated with human faeces. If people drink safe water, use a decent toilet, and wash their hands at critical times (such as before eating), they are far less likely to ingest the pathogens that cause diarrhoea.
There are other diseases which kill large numbers of people, which can be prevented by adequate WASH. The most important of these is pneumonia, the biggest killer of children. One key way that pneumonia is transmitted is via dirty hands, and handwashing with soap has been found to reduce pneumonia by up to 50%.
There are many more important ways in which good WASH improves human health – to read more, click here.
Increasing attention is now being given to using the 'right to water' to shape policy and action and to taking a human rights approach to development and water programmes. The term "human rights" refers to those rights and freedoms essential for human survival, liberty and dignity that have been recognised by the global community and protected by international legal instruments.
Human rights are not limited to things like freedom of speech, but include all those rights essential for human survival and development in dignity. They include the right to a standard of living adequate for health and wellbeing and the right to education.
In 2002 the UN adopted 'General Comment No. 15' on the right to water, which provides guidelines for states on the interpretation of the right to water. It affirms that "the human right to water entitles everyone to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic uses". It also outlines associated state obligations regarding respecting, protecting and fulfilling the right to water.
To learn more about the right to water, visit www.righttowater.info
Many organizations websites provide the kinds of information that might be useful to users of WASHwatch.org. Here are just a few of them:
End Water Poverty is the international campaign that aims to bring an end to the global water and sanitation crisis
Freshwater Action Network is a major network of civil society organisations implementing and influencing water and sanitation policy and practice.
JMP is the United Nations mechanism tasked with monitoring progress towards the water and sanitation MDG target.
The Global Annual Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) is a UN-Water initiative led by the World Health Organization (WHO). It aims to strengthen evidence-based policy-making in the water and sanitation sector.
WaterAid is an international non governmental organisation aiming to transform lives by improving access to safe water, hygiene and sanitation in the world's poorest communities.
The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) is a multi-donor partnership administered by the World Bank to support poor people in obtaining affordable and sustainable access to water and sanitation services.