"WASH Biasness"

In Today’s world working women plays an important role in the economic growth of a country. National sample survey organization NSSO rounds confirm their increased participation in all sectors of the economy. Number of girls/ women staying out of home for extended hour and regularly travelling long distances, whether for work & education has increased.  In informal sector women workers are out for an average of 16 hours in a day. One of the biggest difficulties women encounter is that of access to a toilet. Even if there is a public toilet, women were afraid to use it because they are dirty stinking, without running water & there is no electricity. Lack of cleaning staff creates nightmarish experience for those who are forced to visit such a facilities. There is an urgent need for women’s toilets besides relieving are themselves they need to use toilet facilities for changing sanitary napkins during menstruation. Lack of toilets puts them at a risk of bladder infections, reproductive tract infection.Last census showed that there are about 26 lakh unhygienic toilets still in use.

With rapid growth of urbanization in India, economic growth of the country increased in a phased manner. Opening door of FDI in many areas raise the global trade. Women had great participation in the over all of our country growth. We are growing, our problem are also growing .one of the biggest problem in the current scenario is lack of Water, Sanitation, Menstrual hygiene and Girl Education. Lack of toilet brings numerous problems to Girl/Women. When they step out from their home, there biggest obstacle is to find Toilets. We can see the gender biasness everywhere whether in employment, wages, services or in Toilet. Preference always given to male. One can see WASH(water sanitation hygiene)Biasness everywhere, Rich people have more access to WASH facilities then poor people, Areas where rich people lives have more toilets then areas where poor lives . Why there is discrimination in providing WASH services?  There are more toilets for males than females. In school there is lack of toilets for girls. They have to share it with Boys which gives a question mark on their security. We can end this discrimination by creating awareness about their rights. When women go out to work, they hardly find any toilet. Even if they find they are dirty, unhygienic & unusable. Some of the toilet are illuminated which became the reason for sexual assault, harassment & rape. Social progress is only possible, if women get their rights.

By : Gaurav Kashyap

source: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=96062

Multi-Level Strategy To Fight Malaria

The United Nations and a coalition of partners today launched a comprehensive approach to fighting malaria, a disease which – despite tremendous advances – still kills an estimated 660,000 people each year and poses a major challenge to development.

With the participation of world leaders gathered in New York for the 68th General Assembly, the Roll Back Malaria Partnership (RBM) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) launched the Multisectoral Action Framework for Malaria, which calls for greater coordinated action among different development sectors to tackle the disease, which exacts its deadliest toll in sub-Saharan Africa.

The Framework identifies actions to address the social and environmental determinants of malaria, and calls for current malaria strategies to be complemented by a broader development approach, according to a UNDP news release.

“Malaria is a disease associated with lack of socio-economic development, poverty, marginalization and exploitation. Each of these dimensions has roots beyond the health sector – so a multi-sectoral response is essential if we are to free the world from the burden of malaria,” said Rebeca Grynspan, UNDP Associate Administrator.

According to UNDP, stronger global health partnerships and greater funding in recent years have already resulted in unprecedented progress, with a 25 per cent decrease in global malaria deaths. Forty-three countries have seen malaria cases decrease by more than 50 per cent.

Factors that increase vulnerability to malaria infection, however, often lie outside the health sector, involving housing, education, urban planning, agriculture, transportation and other areas, UNDP said.

For that reason, the RBM coalition and UNDP conducted consultations among more than 70 experts from a variety of sectors to develop an operational roadmap for identifying key steps, expected outcomes, and capacities needed to integrate malaria control into broader development processes.

“The Multisectoral Action Framework for Malaria will guide the global response to malaria in coming years as we develop the next phase of the Global Malaria Action Plan as well as the post-2015 agenda,” said Fatoumata Nafo-Traoré, Executive Director of the Roll Back Malaria Partnership.

Targeted by the current development framework, the Millennium Development Goals and identified by UNSecretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a top priority under his second mandate, malaria affects all aspects of development, costing Africa alone some $12 billion in lost productivity each year, according to UNDP

World Saved Some 90 Million Children But Likely To Miss Global Target

Photo: ©UNICEF/NYHQ2012-2093/Noah Friedman-Rudovsky

13 September 2013 – Global and national efforts to end preventable deaths of children under-five years of age saved some 90 million lives in the past two decades, but at the current rate, a universal promise to reduce child mortality by two-thirds by 2015 will not be reached, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported today.

“Yes, we should celebrate the progress,” said Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. “But how can we celebrate when there is so much more to do before we reach the goal? And we can speed up the progress – we know how, but we need to act with a renewed sense of urgency.”

The number of deaths fell to 6.6 million in 2012 from 12.6 million in 1990, according the report released today, 2013 Progress Report on Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed.

The reductions are due to more effective and affordable treatments, improvements in mothers’ nutrition and education, innovations in bringing critical services to poor and excluded people and sustained political commitment.

Unless progress is sped up, however, it will take until 2028 before the world meets the target set by the Millennium Development Goal (MDGs) to reduce overall child mortality by two-thirds by 2015.

During that time, as many as 35 million more children would have died, UNICEF cautioned.

Some of the world’s poorest countries have made the strongest gains in child survival since 1990.

A few high-mortality, low-income countries - Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nepal, Timor Leste and Tanzania - have already reduced their under-five mortality rates by two-thirds or more since 1990, according to the figures in the report.

East Asia and Asia Pacific leads the global trend in reductions in child mortality, UNICEF reported. Since 1990, the region reduced its under-five mortality by over 60 per cent.

In contrast, West and Central Africa has seen a drop of just 39 per cent in its under-five mortality, the lowest among all the regions with almost one in every eight children dying before the age of five.

The UN agency reported that there are a number of reasons to account for the challenges in the region – including low social benefits, lack of sanitation facilities, and poor education rates.

The Governments of Ethiopia, India and the United States, together with the UN agency, launched last year ‘Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed’, a global effort to accelerate efforts to stop young children from dying from preventable causes. Some 176 governments have signed on, including those making some of the greatest strides in under-five mortality.

The effort seeks to advance Every Woman Every Child, a strategy launched by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to mobilize and intensify global action to improve the health of women and children through action and advocacy to accelerate reductions in preventable maternal, newborn and child deaths.

“When sound strategies, adequate resources and strong political will are harnessed in support of child and maternal survival, dramatic reductions in child mortality aren’t just feasible, they are morally imperative,” said Mr. Lake.

The report highlighted that pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria remain the leading causes of child deaths globally, claiming the lives of around 6,000 children under five each day. Undernutrition contributes to almost half of all under-five deaths.

The first month of life is the most precarious for a young child, according to the report. In 2012, close to three million babies died during the first month of life, mostly from easily preventable causes.

“Dealing effectively with the water and sanitation crisis is fundamental to fighting disease and poverty.”

Now is the time for accelerated, energized and concerted action on water and sanitation, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson today urged, calling for renewed cooperation on water management and access to adequate sanitation for the more than 2.5 billion people around the world without it.

In a keynote address to the World Water Week plenary session in Stockholm, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said:“Dealing effectively with the water and sanitation crisis is fundamental to fighting disease and poverty.”

“In a world of population growth and pressures on water resources within and among nations, sound and fair water management is a huge task and a clear imperative for all of us,” Mr. Eliasson added.

He urged the hundreds of delegates gathered for the session entitled “Building partnerships for Sanitation and Water for All” to work towards sustainable solutions and measures among actors, including national governments, local administrations, development partners, international organizations, the private sector, the research and science community and civil society.

Water and sanitation are included in the eight anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which world leaders agreed to meet by the end of 2015.

The deputy noted last year's announcement that the world had reached the target for access to improved sources of water, but water quality to a large degree still fails to meet basic UN World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

Roughly 80 per cent of global wastewater from human settlements or industrial sources is discharged untreated, contaminating oceans, lakes and rivers.

Inadequate water supply and sanitation around the world lead to an economic loss of $260 billion in health costs and diminished work productivity, WHO reported. Meanwhile, meeting the MDG target on water and sanitation amount to $60 billion annually, according to studies Mr. Eliasson cited.

Sanitation is the most lagging of the MDGs. Meeting the target would involve reducing the proportion of people without access to sanitation from more than half to 25 per cent by 2015.

“We must continue to break taboos. As was the case for the word 'toilets' a few years ago, it is time to incorporate 'open defecation' in the diplomatic discourse today,” Mr. Eliasson urged.

Currently, one out of every four people in the least developed countries defecates in the open. Ending the practice could, for instance, lead to a 36 per cent reduction in diarrhoea, the deputy UN chief noted, and enhance the personal safety of women and girls who risk sexual assaults when venturing from their homes to isolated places for basic needs.

Open defecation is part of the “Call to Action” that Mr. Eliasson launched in March on behalf of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It aims to improve hygiene, change social norms, better managing human waste and waste-water, and completely eliminate the practice of open defecation by 2025. The General Assembly furthered that aim last month, declaring 19 November as World Toilet Day.

Noting examples of international cooperation on these issues, Mr. Eliasson noted the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) initiative comprised of governments, donors, civil society organizations, development partners and several UN agencies.

In its latest report, the SWA partnership said that political leadership and concrete action have led to good progress on creating universal and sustainable access to decent sanitation and drinking water, but additional efforts are needed.

High-level members of the group are due to meet again next April, in a meeting led by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank.

Turning to his experiences in Darfur, Sudan, where Mr. Eliasson had been a Special Envoy of the Secretary-General, the UN deputy chief cautioned that water scarcity is an increasing reason for conflict.

“I have seen it in Darfur where poisoning of water wells was a way for forcing people to leave their villages for the overcrowded camps,” he noted, as well as in strained relations between States related to cross-border river and waterways management, agriculture and energy.

“If competition for resources turns into open conflict, invariably all sides, all involved, will suffer,” Mr. Eliasson said. “Our aim must be to make scarce resources, in particular water, a reason for cooperation rather than conflict.”

Source:UNNC

To Boost Clean Development Efforts

The United Nations climate change secretariat has signed an agreement with the Latin American Development Bank to increase participation in clean development projects in the region, it was today announced.

The agreement, signed by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat, will establish a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) regional collaboration centre (RCC) in Bogotá, Colombia.

“The CDM has demonstrated what can be achieved when we use markets to incentivize action on climate change and development,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary, Christiana Figueres, said in a statement.

“The RCC in Bogotá will help tap the potential for CDM projects in Latin America and serve as a working example of the kind of inter-agency cooperation necessary to tackle climate change,” she added.

The CDM RCCs are part of an effort to bring the benefits of the Kyoto Protocol’s emission-reduction projects in developing countries to earn certified emission reductions – or CERs – which can then be traded, sold and used by industrialized countries to meet environmental targets. Each CER is equivalent to one ton of carbon dioxide.

This is the fourth regional collaboration centre established by the UNFCCC and a regional development bank. The first centre was established in 2012 in Lomé, Togo, in collaboration with the Banque Ouest Africaine de Développement and provides assistance in the development of CDM projects in Francophone Africa.

Source : http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=45694&Cr=climate&Cr1=#.Uib5_dJHLHU