Water Day celebration in The Hague
World Water day is held annually on March 22nd, starting in 1993 when it was suggest at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day in light of the increase in demand for water access, allocation and services.
According to UN estimates, still 783 million people live without access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack accesses to adequate sanitation.
The event series, hosted by the Government of the Netherlands, was attended by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Prince Hassan from Jordan, Prince of Orange, and other high level personalities.
President Sirleaf spoke about the urgency of universal access to water and proper sanitation and called for the realisation of equity in access to water.
Prince Hassan from Jordan stressed that water security cannot be solved by individual states and that the political economy of refugees needs to be part of the international cooperation on water.
Prince Hassan added that he was “sick and tired of the supremacy of the arms industry and the war on terror” and urged all leaders of the region to sit together to speak about human dignity. He said: “We need to stress in the post 2015 agenda human dignities, such as access to clean water and sanitation.”
The Prince of Orange from the Netherlands commented that the water crisis is increasing and argued that it should be central to the next MDGs.
Rabbi Soetendorp from the Netherlands, addressing the panel asked for water to be regarded as the source of life and humanity.
Mr Jarraud, chair of UN Water and the Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organisation argued that water is key to deal with the complexity of climate change. “Droughts will be more severe. Floods will be more frequent”, he warned.
According to Mr Jarraud, a new information system is needed as traditional ways are failing: “the complexity is so big we cannot understand all the issues, so we need to focus on key issues such as water.”
“We need an SDG on water. If SDG's diverge from MDGs we really have a problem. Perhaps the SDGs should be considered to be the road to the MDGs”, he added.
Source:
- UN Water (pdf)
