Christian relief agency Tearfund noted at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester this week that the billions of people in the developing world without access to clean water and latrines represent a "hidden emergency".
In a meeting joined by Hilary Benn, International Development Secretary, Tearfund Advocacy Director Andy Atkins said that global targets to halve the 1.1 billion people without access to clean water and the 2.6 billion people without latrines by 2015 would be missed without greater global effort and investment.
"In Africa the water target is unlikely to be met until 2050 and the sanitation target by 2100. This represents a huge broken promise to the world's poor," he stated.
Atkins commended the British government on recent increases in its funding for water and sanitation, but added that much more could be done, including the Government using its influence to reverse the continuous global fall in aid for water and sanitation over the past five years. He added that Millennium Development Goals to increase access to health and education would be undermined without a much higher priority being given to water and sanitation.
Responding, Hilary Benn described the task of providing water and sanitation to the billions of people who need it as "an enormous challenge".I am always asking our programmes overseas what we are doing to improve water and sanitation.
Hilary Benn
He blamed failures in political systems for contributing to the world community "taking its eye off the ball over this most fundamental stuff of life."
And he described a visit to rural Tanzania where he asked a woman villager what she needed most. "She held up a plastic drinking bottle with just about the dirtiest water I have seen in my life and said 'can we have clean water in the village please?'"
Hilary Benn added: "Water and sanitation matter. I am always asking our programmes overseas what we are doing to improve water and sanitation."
Tearfund partner Rev George Bagamuhunda, of the Diocese of Kigezi Water & Sanitation Programme in Uganda, told the fringe meeting that two out of three people admitted to hospital in one of the districts where he works were suffering from avoidable diseases due to poor water and sanitation.
"This puts strain on the already weak health sector. Poor people have to raise money for treatment, children miss school and all economic activities at the household are brought to a standstill...Lack of access to water supplies results in a big burden for women and children who spend lots of time searching for water - time they could have spent attending school or producing food," he said.
Describing the difference clean water and access to sanitation can make for individuals, Rev Bagamuhunda described a conversation he had with a woman who recently had a water tank installed at her home. "She said to me: 'I can now laugh and go out in public because I am able to wash and to clean my teeth.' This woman is now attending hygiene education classes, literacy classes and is being empowered to have a voice in the planning and management of her own life. She is no longer just a passenger in the progress of development."
