Water and Sanitation

Help us mark World Water Day on 22 March 2010.

Why World Water Day?

Every day billions of people are denied access to safe water and sanitation facilities, such as toilets. This has a massive impact on child rights. Lack of safe water can affect a child's right to be healthy by causing deadly diseases such as typhoid and cholera as well as malaria and yellow fever, which breed in water and are caused by insects.

The impact on your rights

Apart from the impact on children's health, a lack of access to safe water can also affect a child's right to an education. Some children can't go to school because they have to fetch water for their families. Or they might not want to go to school if there aren’t any toilets there.   

World Water Day is an opportunity to raise awareness of this issue.

Take action

1. Sign our online petition to the UK Government. UNICEF is organising the first ever meeting on Sanitation and Water in April this year. We're asking the Government to send their senior representatives to the meeting and to encourage other countries' governments to do the same, to make sure this global issue is taken seriously. Take our online action and share it with your friends and family.
   
2. Join the World's Longest Toilet Queue. We're teaming up with End Water Poverty to organise a worldwide event to attract the attention of world leaders and raise awareness on the issue of water and sanitation. People around the world will get together to form a series of toilet queues in an attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the longest toilet queue. Join a queue being organised in your area, or organise your own.
3. Campaign on the issue - check out our top tips for campaigning.
   
4. Organise a school assembly or a discussion with your friends or youth group.
5. Tag the Water and Sanitation campaign wall to show your support.
   
6. Spread the word through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and persuade people to sign our online action.
   
7. Fundraise. You could organise a quiz or a party, or ask people to make a donation to go to the loo. Check out our fundraising tips and ideas to help you get started.
   

Fast facts:

• Almost fifty per cent of the developing world’s population (2.5 billion people) lack proper sanitation facilities such as toilets.
• Over 884 million people use unsafe drinking water sources.
• One of the Millennium Development Goals, agreed by the international community to reduce global poverty by 2015, is to "halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation".
• One in five children have no access to safe water.
• One in three children have no toilet or sanitation facilities at home.
• Over 5,000 children die every day because of diseases spread by poor sanitation and unclean water such as malaria, yellow fever, typhoid and cholera (otherwise not too much point having the jargon buster).

Jargon buster:

Sanitation: A safe way of getting rid of sewage and waste.
Malaria: Disease caused by a parasite, transferred to the human bloodstream by a mosquito, which occupies and destroys red blood cells.
Yellow fever: A disease found in warm climates, caused by a virus transmitted by a mosquito.
Typhoid: A stomach infection caused by a bacteria found in food or drink.
Cholera: A dangerous disease, caused by bacteria in food or water that has been contaminated with raw sewage.
End Water Poverty: A coalition of organisations, of which UNICEF are members, from all over the world who are aiming to end the global water and sanitation crisis.