The year 2008 was declared the International Year of Sanitation by the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizi ...

in conjunction with the

Water for Life Decade The United Nations General Assembly, in December 2003, proclaimed the years 2005-2015 as the International Decade for Action 'Water for Life'. Its primary goal is to promote efforts to fulfill international commitments made on water and water relat ...

. The

United Nations General Assembly The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; french: link=no, Assemblée générale, AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as the main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ of the UN. Cur ...

has declared 2008 the International Year of

Sanitation Sanitation refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and treatment and disposal of human excreta and sewage. Preventing human contact with feces is part of sanitation, as is hand washing with soap. Sanitation syste ...

. Worldwide there are roughly 2.6 billion people who do not have access to basic sanitation today. The goal of 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation was to help raise awareness of this crisis and to accelerate progress towards reaching the UN's

Millennium Development Goals The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight international development goals for the year 2015 that had been established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millenn ...

(MDG's) and cutting the number of people without access to basic sanitation in half by the year 2015.

Objectives

The progress towards achieving the

sanitation Sanitation refers to public health conditions related to clean drinking water and treatment and disposal of human excreta and sewage. Preventing human contact with feces is part of sanitation, as is hand washing with soap. Sanitation syste ...

MDG has been slow and varied in different parts of the world. The main objective in declaring 2008 as the International Year of Sanitation is to help get the sanitation MDG back on track for achieving the goal of halving the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015. Accomplishing this goal will require cooperation between different UN agencies, especially UNDESA and

UNICEF UNICEF (), originally called the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund in full, now officially United Nations Children's Fund, is an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid t ...

, as well as government agencies, NGO's, private companies, and academic circles. The year aimed to develop awareness and action to meet the

sanitation target. Particular concerns are: * Removing the stigma around sanitation, so that the importance of sanitation can be more easily and publicly discussed. * Highlighting the

poverty reduction Poverty reduction, poverty relief, or poverty alleviation, is a set of measures, both economic and humanitarian, that are intended to permanently lift people out of poverty. Measures, like those promoted by Henry George in his economics clas ...

health Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organiza ...

and other benefits that flow from better hygiene, household sanitation arrangements and wastewater treatment.

Outcomes

The network

Sustainable Sanitation Alliance The Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA) is a loose network of organizations who are "working along the same lines towards achieving sustainable sanitation". It began its work in 2007, one year before the United Nations International Year of ...

was formed in 2007 in order to have a joint label for the planned activities for the International Year of Sanitation in 2008 and to be able to align the organisations with each other for further potential initiatives.SuSanA (2008
Towards more sustainable sanitation solutions - SuSanA Vision Document
Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (SuSanA)

History

The spotlight on sanitation as a major issue worldwide began in 2000 with the United Nations adoption of the Millennium Development Goals, which aim at diminishing poverty and increasing health and the general well-being of all people. Further development of these goals was discussed in 2002 at the

World Summit on Sustainable Development The World Summit on Sustainable Development 2002, took place in South Africa, from 26 August to 4 September 2002. It was convened to discuss ustainable developmentorganizations, 10 years after the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. (It was the ...

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a Megacity#List of megacities, megacity, and is List of urban areas by p ...

, with the inclusion of access to sanitation as fundamental to achieving all goals surrounding bringing an end to poverty. The Johannesburg Plan of Action established the objective of halving the number of people without access to basic sanitation by the year 2015.

References

External links

* Lifewater Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20080228232149/http://www.lifewater.org/the_global_need/water_and_hygiene.html * UN-International Day of Sanitation Website: https://web.archive.org/web/20071019013414/http://esa.un.org/iys/
UNICEF – IYS

UN Water
{{DEFAULTSORT:International Year Of Sanitation United Nations General Assembly resolutions Sanitation, International Year of 2008 in international relations Sanitation

Objectives

Outcomes

History

See also

References

External links