The U.N. had set a goal back at the beginning of the millennium to reduce by half the number of people without adequate sanitation by 2015, this Tuesday the organization announced it is short of that goal by 700 million.
The United Nations have special agencies that deal with tracking access to water and sanitation targets and comparing them to the Millennium Development Goals set by the organization. These Agencies warned on Tuesday that the lack of progress leaves many at risk and poses serious threats to child survivability.
The Joint Monitoring Programme report, Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water: 2015 Update and MDG Assessment, was released on Tuesday by the WHO and UNICEF. The report was more than worrying, and stated that 1 in every three people on the planet still do not have access to proper sanitation facilities.
A total of 2.4 billion people are at risk of contracting and spreading diseases, through the lack of sanitation facilities, this threatens to keep other objectives from being accomplished, like the decrease in child mortality rates and the improvement of maternal health.
Without proper and sustained access to adequate water, sanitation, and hygiene people are at risk of contracting 16 of the 17 “neglected tropical diseases” among other types of infections, viruses and deadly bacteria.
At the moment 946 million people are forced by the lack of progress to defecate in the open. The U.N. plans to help eradicate this practice by 2030 as part of its newly proposed Sustainable Development Plan, to be set in September 2015 by the U.N. General Assembly.
Several factors could of contributed to slowing the development process and affecting the U.N. set Goals. The Global Economic Crisis of 2007-2008 has definitely affected the level of funding and development and also slowed down the progress made by NGOs and independent health organizations.
With government funds reduced and donations towards NGOs diminished for several years, the economic crisis which was unforeseen at the moment the goals were set, could be one of the main factors for the U.N. failure to reach the MDGs.
In total the Millennium Summit set 8 Goals back in the year 2000. these goals were all set on a planetary level and required cooperation between all 189 member states existent at the time.
Achieving the eight goals could be the most important international development plan ever set in motion since the Marshall Plan. Some of the goals are eradicating world hunger, universal primary education, combating HIV, Malaria and other diseases and establishing a global partnership for development.
Image Source: un.org
