Advocacy at Global Level

A key objective for the rest of the 90s is to change the way that the water and sanitation sector is perceived nationally and internationally, to secure its proper share of resources and attention. The water sector has to be seen as a sector concerned with meeting human need and solving human problems; concerned with people and their health, children and their growth, women and their welfare, families and their enrichment, communities and their environment. The link between clean water and health, and between effective sanitation and efforts to protect the environment must become clear to policy makers at all levels.

Advocacy at this level must be one of the main concerns between now and the end of the century. International awareness can be heightened through use of global or regional ambassadors to act as advocates, and through use of The World Day for Water.

Field Examples

in Mexico the Ministry of Agriculture produces video cassettes on health topics such as hygiene and water supplies.
in Swaziland the Ministry of Health has organised training workshops for folk healers on prevention of common childhood diseases. As a result the healers have increased their knowledge of, among others, the use of latrines, hygiene and the importance of safe water in preventing disease.
in Nepal, where there are 600 doctors for 17 million people, Gurkha soldiers, who retire and return to their villages aged 36, were trained to train faith healers in oral rehydration.
In Uganda all primary schools now teach basic child health knowledge as part of science lessons (including safe water and sanitation).
in China the All China Women's Federation runs 120,000 parents' schools where 5 million parents learn about pregnancy, child birth, child health, hygiene and sanitation.
in Yemen mothers learn through literacy classes about hygiene, sanitation and diarrhoeal control.
in Colombia thousands of school children took the role of "health scouts" to help disseminate important health information to parents, friends and neighbours.
Bangladesh reported an astonishing reduction of diarrhoeal-related deaths by 26% after women community health volunteers taught families simple hygiene practices such as washing hands with soap before eating or preparing food, safely disposing of garbage and defecating away from the family compound.
In Guatemala, women volunteers attend 40 hours of training over five weeks and learn about immunization, malnutrition, diarrhoea, basic hygiene and family planning, They make house to house visits and try to teach what they have learned to others - in fact - becoming communicators themselves. Not only has this health education programme provided health benefits to the community, it has also fostered in the women a sense of accomplishment and self-confidence.
OXFAM, WaterAid, and many other Northern NGOs raise significant sums of money to help implement projects in developing countries.
In Kenya, the Kenyan Water for Health Organisation, KWAHO, and in India the Lutheran World Service India, are two examples of community initiated and managed projects.
In Sichun Province, China, the All China Women's Federation trains 800 family education workers each year on child care, including better hygiene and sanitation.
in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Hong Kong, India, Jordan, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand, unions have organised workshops and short courses informing their members about, among others, home hygiene.
in India business houses regularly sponsor advertisements and feature articles in national newspapers on, among other things, prevention and treatment of diarrhoea.
in Nepal the Agricultural Development Bank publishes a wall newspaper for display at 20,000 village sites, covering topics such as water supply and hygiene.
in Egypt the Al Azhar University has researched messages from the Koran in support of child health.
in Thailand Buddhist monks trained in primary health care help give advice on basic hygiene and sanitation, water supplies and family planning to millions of faithful followers.
the success in Colombia and Brazil in the dissemination of health and nutrition messages is largely due to the active involvement of the Catholic Church, who have committed thousands of bishops, priests, nuns and lay people, using the Church's formidable influence to promote child protection, health and development.
In Lesotho, a "Theatre for Development" acting troupe uses active audience participation in plays to underscore the importance of improved sanitation and hygiene. A project evaluation in the Mohales Moek of this participatory approach revealed increased discussion and awareness of VIP latrines and heightened demand.
in India once every week over 10,000 groups of 35 women listen to a 30-minute radio broadcast on child health, including environmental hygiene, and diarrhoea prevention.
in Algeria the national newspapers "El Moujahahid" and "Revolution Africaine" run regular features, news stories, editorials and cartoons covering the government's drive to reduce infant mortality through among others improved water supplies, sanitation and hygiene.
since 1980 the Ministry of Health in Nicaragua has printed and distributed over 3 million of comic books on health topics such as diarrhoea, hygiene, water supply, sanitation and malaria.
in Nepal UNICEF has published an Instant Illustration workbook with over 600 line drawings by several of the country's best artists. Topics included hygiene, water supply.

In February 1993 the UN General Assembly declared that 22 March would become World Day for Water with three key global messages.

All social and economic activities rely heavily on the supply and quantity of fresh water.
Many countries are rapidly reaching conditions of water scarcity or facing limits to economic development.
The promotion of water conservation and sustainable management requires public awareness at local, national and international levels.

Policy makers at a global level need to become convinced that water and sanitation needs constitute:

an investment in human development that is cost-effective and yields health and economic benefits,
a social imperative that can no longer be ignored, and
a key element in breaking the cycle that leads from pollution to a degraded environment, disease and the waste of natural resources.

Key message elements to convince policy makers globally

Global advocates can make use of the following facts to motivate policy makers.

The problems

1.5 to 1 billion people, one in three in the world, are without access to safe water and sanitation, and the number without access is increasing.
at this moment 26 of the world's countries get less water than they need. Over the next 30 years another 40 nations are expected to join them, as populations outstrip their rainfall.
each litre of polluted water contaminates clean water in the river or lake that receives it. Three quarters of Poland' rivers are too contaminated even for industrial use. More than two thirds of China's rivers are seriously polluted, while 40 of Malaysia's rivers are said to be 'biologically dead'.
Deforestation destabilises water supplies. When mountains and hills were covered in rain-capturing forests, Bangladesh used to suffer from overwhelming floods once every 50 years. By the 1970s they were happening every four years, and the pace continues to increase.
Eighty per cent of all diseases, four out of five cases of sickness, in developing countries can be attributed to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation.
Three to four million children under five die of dehydration each year, a result of diarrhoeal diseases caused by polluted water and unsanitary environment. In India three young children die every minute from dirty water, and waterborne diseases cost the economy 73 million working days a year.
Vector-borne diseases kill millions and maim millions more. Guinea worms alone afflict 20 million sufferers. Schistosomiasis affects 200 million, and malaria 500 million. Loss of productivity from the these diseases in staggering.

Some solutions

The World Health Organization recognises that improvements in water and sanitation facilities constitute the most effective measure in controlling cholera, typhoid, parasitic and other endemic diseases.
A global movement involving communities, governments and international agencies is under way, begun by the International Drinking Water and Sanitation Decade, which is gathering momentum, but lacks resources to reach the yet to be reached.
During the last decade water was made available to 1.3 billion people and sanitation facilities were built for 750,000,000 people. If everybody puts in his or her best efforts the job of serving the unserved can be done in the 1990s.
Improvement in drinking water supply has helped to reduce diarrhoea-related morbidity by 40 per cent, and improved sanitary waste disposal has contributed to a decrease in child morbidity by 25 per cent.
Accessible safe water saves women's time, which improves the welfare of women and provides more time for family care or income producing activities. Collecting water and fuel costs a woman in a waterless village in Burkina about 500 calories of energy a day, a quarter of what she gets from sparse meals.

Global advocacy has had an impact, although not yet a sufficient one. Agenda 21, the basis for action arising out of The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio in June 1992 included recommendations about promoting the water and sanitation sector, and promoting participatory ways of working. What came out of the World Summit was not enough, but puts down a marker for the future.

A Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council joint Report with the World Health Organisation and UNICEF concluded: "Due to inadequate advocacy and promotion of the sector in the past, the unserved population continues to grow. Therefore to reach "universal access" advocacy will have to be aggressively pursued to attract a larger share of national and external resources to the sector in future."

To support IEC activities at country level, the sector must ensure that action is taken to develop the appropriate approach towards global advocacy of the Water and Sanitation Sector to ensure that appropriate supporting action is taken on a continuous basis. Previous experience from within the sector and the experiences of other sectors which have set out down the same road should be used as a basis for this work.