Burdensome Access to Water and Sanitation

Some of you might be wondering why this blog is named Realising African Rights. To overturn this query, I will outline the reasons why in this post. Then, to pre-emptively quash any concerns about the legitimacy of my claim, I will support it with a range of examples.

The right to safe water and sanitation facilities has been embraced whole-heartedly by international organisations as nothing less than a basic human right. The United Nations, in particular, has adopted this term time and time again, using it to illustrate its position on access to water and sanitation. Yet, in accordance with Sultana and Loftus (2012), ‘how such universal calls for a right to water are understood, negotiated, experienced and struggled over remain key challenges.’

In other words, despite the fact international organisations, governments and quasi-governmental institutions, non-governmental organisations, and other, grassroots organisations, all, repeatedly, demonstrate the fact they understand the miserable situation in regard to water and sanitation, I am of the opinion not everyone is fully aware of the undesirably restrictive access to safe water and sanitation facilities in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

I argue the water and sanitation target in the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (7.C) was not met because the vast majority of the world’s population did not appreciate or concern themselves with this problem, and the target to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) (Goal 6) is likely to follow a similar path and not be achieved.

Children drink from water pump. Source: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters

The reason for this claim is based on the fact progress to eliminate the detrimental effects attached to a limited access to safe water and sanitation facilities is slower than the level it should be. The combined efforts of all actors involved in improving the situation of access to safe water and sanitation facilitates should, I suggest, mean headway is much quicker.

The catastrophically large number of child deaths caused by diarrhoeal disease (which many label is a waterborne disease) in SSA is, for example, a persistent problem. It is a problem which has received attention in a variety of policy documents and initiatives, but has not been overcome. Today, according to the WHO (2016), an estimated 1.5 million child deaths per year are caused by the disease.

The time spent collecting water by women and children, as another example of how the situation of access to safe water and sanitation has been neglected by the vast majority of the world’s population, is extremely high in SSA. In fact, according to the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Report (2015), ‘women and children spend 125 million hours each day collecting water.’ This is time which woman could use to participate in income earning market-based activities. Furthermore, Gayatri Koolwal and Dominique van de Walle (2010) found that ‘both boys’ and girls’ [school] enrolments improve as a result of a reduction in the time needed to collect water.’

Surely, I believe, there are enough socially responsible and conscious individuals on this planet to overcome such harming scenarios in relation to water and sanitation. While this blog has looked into the history of water provision and developmental efforts to overcome unfavourable situations of a limited access to safe water and sanitation in SSA, the next couple of blogs in this series of posts will take a look into the future. It will explore sustainability as a pragmatic concept and the components which compromise sustainable development.