During his visit to India, prince Willem Alexander recently delivered a speech during Seminar ‘Water and Microfinance’ in New Delhi.
At the same time, our new Dutch Youth Representative to the United Nations, Wouter Thiebou, is getting clean and safe drinking water on the international policies agenda, while it seems at the same time a more or less neglected issue. That becomes clear when realizing that 1.2 billion citizens are not getting access to clean drinking water yet…
Here’s an excerpt from the speech of His Highness the Prince of Orange, Willem Alexander:
Ladies and gentlemen,
The UNDP Human Development Report last year explicitly expressed that, when it comes to water, there is a growing recognition that the world faces a crisis that, left unchecked, will derail progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and hold back human development. World wide 1.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. As a result every year some 1.8 million children die from diarrhoea [should be diarrhea...] and other diseases. That equals 5000 children per day, every day again. More people die from water related diseases than from HIV/AIDS, a staggering conclusion knowing that the solution is readily available in the form of sanitation and hygiene. The great and immediate impact of sanitation can no better be illustrated than by the British Medical Journal, that recently chose sanitation as the greatest medical advance since 1840. The technology is there, what we need now is the political will to end this misery.
I know that a lot of work is being done and, as chairman of the United Nations Secretary-general’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation – UNSGAB – I am impressed to see that your country is “on track†for the MDG drinking water target and is working hard to bring the target for sanitation closer.   Â
