‘Keep your promises on sanitation’

South Asia’s sanitation campaigners put their signature on campaign messages in a brief but spectacular show and submitted their memoranda to the SAARC Secretariat after a 30-minute dignity march Tuesday to launch their year-long campaign ‘Keep your promises on sanitation’.

Streets around the regional association’s Secretariat in Nepal’s capital wore a festive look with a group dancing to the beat of drums in front of the ‘dignity march’ where over 1,000 campaigners joined holding placards ‘We don’t want growth without dignity.’

‘Invest in toilets, invest in lives; It smells foul, South Asia time to build toilets’ were some of the messages in the campaign launched in view of the grim sanitation scenario in the region, despite economic progress.

According to the UK charity WaterAid, which unites all for the campaign, despite governments’ commitment at the highest level, South Asia as a region is home to world’s largest number of people, nearly 700 million, defecating in the open.

Campaigners will draw attention of the political leaderships in their respective countries during the year-long campaign regarding their commitment to ensure sanitation for all.

“We want to highlight the fact that things can’t go on like this. Sanitation should matter and get priority in development agenda,” WaterAid Nepal’s country representative Ashutosh Tiwari said in his brief speech in the midst of the cultural show.

Nepal’s popular peacock dance and yak dance mesmerised the audience in the show at National Table Tennis Centre where traditional dances carrying the messages of sanitation were also performed.

Two women parliamentarians of the group Habibun Naher from Bangladesh and Anasuya Bansari from India handed over the ‘citizens’ charter’ adopted by the civil society representatives and the joint statement issued by the MPs to the SAARC Secretariat after the march.

The citizens’ charter called upon the governments to recognise sanitation as a ‘fundamental human right for health, dignity and development.’

It also demanded that the governments allocate 1 percent of their GDP or an adequate percentage of the national budget for achieving universal access to sanitation.

Donors have been asked to double their financing in South Asia.

The parliamentarians acknowledged the adverse impact of improper sanitation on health, well-being and prosperity of the region.

They also called upon all political parties to commit sanitation as rights within the ‘constitutional and legal framework’ of all regional countries.

The memoranda want the SAARC nations to speak in one voice for overall water and sanitation improvement in this region towards developing the post-2015 development agenda.

According to WaterAid, at least 69 percent people in Nepal, 66 percent in India, 63 percent in Afghanistan, 56 percent in Bhutan, 52 percent in Pakistan and 44 percent in Bangladesh do not have access to sanitised latrines.

The economic impact of poor sanitation as estimated by the World Bank finds that Bangladesh, India and Pakistan lose 4-6 percent of its GDP due to poor sanitation.

“Our objective is to get a commitment from the government and reflect it in all its process from making policies to budgets,” a civil society representative from Bangladesh Milon Bikash Paul told bdnews24.com.

He is optimistic about their year-long movement.

“Our charter and parliamentarians’ statement will go to the South Asian regional conference on sanitation at the end of this year and then it will find its way into the conference declaration.

“The declaration will be signed by the ministers of the regional countries. Then it will become a part of the government’s commitment.

“And this conference declaration will also go to the upcoming SAARC summit and if it finds its place in the SAARC declaration then it will become a more strong collective commitment.

“Once they (governments’) commit, we can pursue them to implement,” he said.

WaterAid estimates that $1 spending on sanitation can return $4 to a country, apart from reducing unwanted deaths due to diarrhoea and respiratory infections.

High burden of malnutrition is also attributed to the poor sanitation as the infections do not allow the children to absorb the food they eat.

When they get older, researchers say it also impacts on their well-being that affects their economic progress as well.