Seventeen Latin American and Caribbean countries have pledged to improve basic water and sanitation services by placing these issues high on their political agendas.
The pledge was made in Cali, Colombia yesterday at the end of a five-day Water and Sanitation Conference.
The countries also vowed to better manage sewage and solid waste, promote good hygiene in improving the standard of life and quality of service particularly in the health sector, conserve the environment and reduce poverty.
They hope to realise these main objectives by strengthening inter-governmental cooperation in the region through the activation of an inter-country working group called Latinosan, which would involve representation at high levels and meet annually.
The pledge, contained in the Declaration of Cali and signed by the heads of the governmental delegations, was made in advance of a renewed focus on issues of water and sanitation. The United Nations had declared in December 2006 that next year would be the International Year of Sanitation and that sufficient has not been done to deal with the issue.
Millions of people in Latin America and the Caribbean do not have access to potable water and proper sanitation and those most affected are rural populations, indigenous peoples, and women and children.
The meeting noted that even though there has been major improvement in the level of sanitation in Latin America over the past decade there was still much more work to be done. In 2004, there were 125 million people – 14 per cent of the urban population and 51 per cent of the rural population – in the region without access to a decent sanitation system.
In signing the declaration the countries affirmed their commitment to form political alliances to meet the objectives of the UN Millennium Development Goals and the International Year of Sanitation through the provision of adequate sanitation systems to meet the needs of the population.
Noting that sanitation has not been given priority political attention in many countries, the signatories aim to change this by placing it high on their countries’ national development agendas.
According to the declaration, next year they plan to increase the awareness of the issues of water and sanitation at all levels of society, by using the media and existing alliances with financial institutions, sanitation service providers, industrial groups, the private sector, UN agencies and mobilising national and local government bodies through collaborative agreements, that would define how and by whom the projects and programmes would be executed.
They also committed themselves to promoting sustainable programmes to ensure that sanitation systems put in place are not neglected and to develop human resource and institutional capacity to execute the various programmes. It was noted that lack of expertise has in the past, and continues to, stymie the execution of some of the best designed programmes.
In terms of strengthening inter-governmental cooperation in the region, the declaration noted that Latinosan would meet annually. A similar meeting of ministers of water and sanitation is planned for the year 2010, where they would review their work programmes and achievements.
At the close of the meeting yesterday morning, Colombia’s Vice Minister Leyla Rojas noted that on the subject of water, the region has improved its services significantly through the help of many including the World Bank and the IDB. But while strides were made in the water sector, she said, the issue of sanitation lagged behind.
The governments of Guyana, Jamaica, Haiti and Suriname were the Caricom member states invited to attend the conference and make presentation.
Guyana was not represented at the governmental level. Apart from the countries of Latin America, representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank, UNICEF, a number of the non-governmental organisations and civil society were also present at the meeting.
