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Dirty water kills more people
than war, UN says
More people die from unsafe water than from all forms of violence, including war, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said in a message to mark World Water Day.

telegraph.co.uk
Published: 7:00AM GMT 23 Mar 2010

The United Nations children's agency UNICEF noted that more than 155 million people, or 39 per cent of the population in West and Central Africa, do not have access to potable water, with only eight of 24 countries in the region on track to meet key poverty-reduction targets by 2015.

"These deaths are an affront to our common humanity, and undermine the efforts of many countries to achieve their development potential," Mr Ban said as the issue was discussed at a high-level UN General Assembly dialogue.

"Day after day, we pour millions of tons of untreated sewage and industrial and agricultural wastes into the world's water systems," he said, noting that clean water has become scarce and would be even scarcer as a result of climate change.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, raised the stakes, saying that global peace and security will depend on access to water.

"Access to reliable supplies of clean water is a matter of human security. It's also a matter of national security," she said.

Mr. Ban stressed that the world has the know-how to solve the challenge and urged nations to "become better stewards of our water resources."

UNICEF said the water situation in West and Central Africa "remains a major concern," with the region home to the lowest coverage of potable water worldwide.

It said the total number of people in the region without access to improved potable water increased from 126 million to 155 million people from 1990 to 2008.

Despite an improvement in coverage from 49 per cent in 1990 to 61 per cent in 2008 - countries needed to reach 75 per cent by 2015.

Six countries have less than 50 per cent drinking water coverage: Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, Mauritania and Sierra Leone.