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Wed

World Water Day (WWD) 2011

By: Ahmed Alhaj (Site Admin)


Khartoum  (Sudanow)- For the first time "World Day for Water was celebrated on March 22, 1995. It is a unique occasion not just to highlight the magnitude of the problem, but also to bring all stakeholders together to apply solutions that work.

This year the global theme, Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge, aims to spotlight and encourage governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to actively engage in addressing decay of urban water management. In North Sudan, PWC, UNICEF and WASH sector partners selected the theme:  “Water is life and sanitation is dignity” to highlight the challenges faced in water supply and sanitation in urban and rural areas, as well as in emergencies.

The UN Millennium Project Task Force on Water and Sanitation recently recognized that integrated development and management of water resources is crucial to the success or failure of all the MDGs, as water is central to the livelihood systems of the poor.

Access to improved water sources as per the 2009 Sudan National Baseline Household Survey stands at 76% (urban: 92%, rural: 70%) which translates to around 7.3 million people who are still consuming water from unimproved sources. Similarly, access to improved sanitation (safe means of excreta disposal) as per 2009 NBHS stands at 63% (urban: 87%, rural: 52%) that translates to around 11.3 million people who are still without the access to proper sanitation facilities.

The lack of access to safe water and sanitation has many other serious repercussions: Children, particularly girls, are denied their right to education because they are busy fetching water or are deterred by the lack of separate and decent sanitation facilities in schools. Many women are forced to spend significant part of their day fetching water. Farmers and wage earners can be less productive due to water-borne diseases. Thus, sustainable development is impossible without safe water and sanitation improvements in safe water supply, and in particular in hygiene and sanitation, could reduce the incidence of diarrhea by about one fifth and the number of deaths due to diarrhea by more than half. As a result of comprehensive efforts taken by all WASH sector partners, there is no outbreak of acute watery diarrhea for the last two years in whole of North Sudan, which had been endemic affecting thousands of people every year.

For such result, the Community Action Plan (CAP) has been a key strategy to make the communities as the center in leading sanitation and hygiene promotion, and managing water in sustainable manner. WASH programme succeeded in increasing access to improved water supply by 2% in North Sudan in 2010 whereas, 16 rural communities declared their villages as Open Defecation Free communities while other 37 communities are in pipelines as part of the adopted Community Approach for Total Sanitation (CATS).

In 2011, all stakeholders in WASH sector are invited to take part in a new strategy by supporting communities and schools to develop Community Action Plan (CAP) and School Action plan (SAP) respectively as the starting point for any WASH interventions to induce ownership and sustainability.

The national celebration of WWD in North Sudan will take place in Dilling Town South Kordufan and the programme will start with Carnival walk in the main street of the town led by school children and followed by government officials, WASH sector professionals and others. During this occasion, eight communities in South Kordufan which have achieved open defecation free (ODF) status will be declared as ODF communities. The WWD will also be celebrated in others states: Kassala, Gedaref, Blue Nile, North Kordufan, West Darfur, North Darfur and South Darfur with similar activities. Radio and TV messages on the importance of water supply, water management, water quality and the role of community and school in sanitation and hygiene promotion will be relayed.


On this occasion of World Water Day, UNICEF is calling on Federal and State Governments to invest more on water and sanitation for communities, schools and health facilities among others, which will not only save thousands of lives, but also bring sustainable development in these communities, which in turn to the nation. UNICEF also calls on decision-makers and community leaders to refocus attention on sanitation and hygiene as a means to improve health, livelihood and dignity.


Comprehensive efforts is needed by all stake-holders including policy makers, civil society, and media to increases the access of improved water supply and sanitation services along with hygiene promotion.

End

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Sudanow is the longest serving English speaking magazine in the Sudan. It is chartarized by its high quality professional journalism, focusing on political, social, economic, cultural and sport developments in the Sudan. Sudanow provides in depth analysis of these developments by academia, highly ...

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