World Water Day

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to raise the important issue of access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene.

Members will be aware of my long-standing interest in the issue both through my involvement in international development and my professional background. For 10 years before entering full-time politics, I practised as a civil engineer and spent the last five years of my engineering career working in sewerage rehabilitation and design. Others have said that that was good preparation for politics, but I could not possibly comment.

Through my work, I became increasingly aware and supportive of the work being done by WaterAid and other non-governmental organisations and charities to address the deficit of clean water and sanitation infrastructure in many developing nations. I believe it is vital to keep international development needs, especially those as basic and essential as water and sanitation, on the political agenda. Given that 2.6 billion people have no access to adequate and hygienic sanitation methods, the subject of the debate is inevitably and unavoidably broad, but the issue also impacts widely across a range of development objectives. That breadth of impact has contributed to the continuing and increasing political attention that matters related to water and sanitation have been receiving, as there is growing recognition that investment in water and sanitation can have a transformational effect on the lives of people in ways that were previously overlooked.

The timing of the debate is apposite for several reasons: first, world water day is on Saturday 22 March; secondly, we are at a defining moment with respect to the post-2015 development agenda; and, thirdly, the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting will take place in April. I will touch on each of those reasons in my speech, but I want to begin by noting the significance of water and sanitation in the context of last Saturday’s international women’s day.

Of the 2.6 billion people without access to adequate and hygienic sanitation methods, 526 million are girls and women. The impact on their lives, however, is disproportionate. These are girls and women without access to any form of sanitation, meaning that they are forced to defecate in the open, or in bushes or ditches, and they are forced to cope with menstruation in the absence of any real privacy, which adds further indignity to their ordeal. This forces women to make difficult choices: to wait until dark to use a public toilet, where one is available; to defecate in the open; or instead to defecate in their own homes. The World Health Organisation has calculated that women and girls in developing countries spend 98 billion hours each year searching for a place to go to the toilet, more than twice the total hours worked every year by the entire UK labour force.

Women who lack safe access to sanitation, or have no access at all, may end up waiting until it is dark to go to the toilet, have to walk long distances to find an isolated spot in the open, or use often poor public amenities. There are many reported incidents of men hiding in public latrines at night, waiting to rob or assault those who enter. Women and girls defecating in the open are also more at risk of rape and sexual assault.

A WaterAid poll of women in the slums of Lagos in Nigeria, where 40% of women are forced to go to the toilet outside, found that one quarter have had first-hand or second-hand experience of harassment, a threat of violence or actual assault in the past 12 months alone. Furthermore, 67% of women interviewed in Lagos said that they felt unsafe using shared or community toilets in public places.

The second choice is to defecate at home, which carries with it enormous social stigma and can result in isolation. In addition to the stigma, resorting to so-called “flying toilets”—plastic bags or buckets used at home—has detrimental consequences for the health of the family. The links between poor sanitation, water, and illness are well established, with an increased risk of diarrhoea, as well as infections such as trachoma, which can lead to blindness.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Some 768 million people have poor water quality, more than 2.5 billion people have poor sanitation and 1.8 million people die from diarrhoea as a direct result of that, so does the hon. Lady feel that the Minister should be saying in his response that international water aid should be a priority?

[Naomi Long]

I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says, and he is right about the importance of water and sanitation. The biggest single health improvement in the UK came as a direct result of the introduction of sanitation and sewerage systems; in this city alone that one measure added 15 years to average life expectancy.

As a result of trying to limit going to the bathroom for long periods of time and drinking less water over the course of the day, women are also more susceptible to urinary tract infections and dehydration, adversely affecting their health. As women are generally responsible for the disposal of human waste when provision is inadequate, they are also exposed more frequently to diseases such as dysentery and cholera. It has been calculated that every day 2,000 mothers lose a child due to illnesses caused by poor sanitation and dirty water. Half the hospital beds in developing countries are filled by people suffering from diseases caused purely by poor water, sanitation and hygiene. Such statistics are staggering, unimaginable and, in this day and age, unjustifiable. These women and girls are suffering from shame, indignity and disease in their everyday lives as a result of something as routine and necessary as carrying out basic bodily functions.

Lack of access to private sanitation facilities also prevents many young girls from continuing in school beyond puberty, limiting their ability to become financially independent and to contribute fully to their community, and denying them the right to a proper education. History shows that the health, welfare and productivity of developing country populations are closely linked with improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene. Few interventions have a greater impact on the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalised people, particularly women and girls, than reducing the time spent collecting clean water, dealing with sanitation and addressing the health problems caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Although vaccines offer some hope of improvement on the health front, their efficacy is significantly improved where programmes are undertaken in conjunction with improvements in water, sanitation and hygiene. Neither can vaccines alone free women and girls from the time and physical burden of collecting water or from the safety risks posed by lack of sanitation.

I wish briefly to discuss an opportunity the Government have to make such an intervention: the Sanitation and Water for All high-level meeting taking place in Washington on 11 April. The Sanitation and Water for All partnership, of which the UK Government are a founding member, aims to bring about a step change in the performance of the WASH—water, sanitation and hygiene—sector, acting as a catalyst to overcome key barriers and accelerate progress towards universal and sustainable access. It is a global partnership of Governments, donors, civil society and other development partners working together to co-ordinate high-level action, improve accountability and use scarce resources more effectively. The biennial high-level meeting presents a unique opportunity to increase political prioritisation, and to strengthen accountability and the commitment to strengthen the sector’s performance. I want to take this opportunity to press for the Secretary of State for International Development to represent the UK at this important meeting.