Spend money on sanitation, safe water facilities to protect HR
"By doing so human rights could be much better protected," she told her audience from the regional countries and international agencies who are campaigning for ensuring safe water and sanitation for millions of people still deprived of the facilities.
The prime minister was addressing the closing session of the three-day South Asian Conference on Sanitation (Sancosan) at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre (BCFCC) here.
Jointly hosted by Bangladesh government and a number of donor agencies and international organisations, the conference concluded adopting the Dhaka Declaration on Sanitation.
Nine countries--Afghanistan, host Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka--participated in the Sancosan, first of its kind.
The next conference will be held in Pakistan in 2005, to be followed by India in 2007, it was announced at the end of the meet.
On behalf of the participating countries, Indian Minister for Rural Development Kanshi Ram Rana spoke at the function. Bangladesh Health Minister Dr Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain delivered address of welcome and Pakistan Health Minister Mohamed Nasir Khan gave a vote of thanks.
World Health organisation (WHO) regional director on Sanitation Dr Uton Mochtar Rafei and Ugandan Minister of State for Water Maria Mutagamba presented two papers in the closing session.
Nepalese Minister for Physical Planning and Works Buddhiman Tamang read out the Dhaka Declaration on Sanitation. LGRD Minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan presided.
Afghanistan Deputy Minister for Health Dr Azam Mehraban Mir presented Khaleda Zia a crest of the Sacosan.
Quoting a number Unicef statistics of casualties for lack of water and sanitation, Khaleda said 30.4 lakh people die of water-sanitation-hygiene- related diseases every year worldwide. Most of them are children.
She said globally 110 crore people are deprived of safe water while 40 per cent of sanitation facilities. Some 6,000 children die of diarrhoea everyday.
Khaleda said Bangladesh is losing 342 children, on average, everyday owing to diseases caused by lack of facilities for safe water and sanitation and they are all under five. The situation in Bangladesh is no different from the other South Asian countries in this respect.
"What else could be more painful and what else could violate human rights much more?" the Prime Minister posed a question at the function, attended by ministers, high officials heading respective country's delegations, representatives of various donor agencies, development partners and local and foreign organiations.
The prime minister noted that the number of people enjoying sanitation facilities in all South Asian countries is very low and, as a result, child mortality rates in this region are very high.
It has serious negative impact on the efforts for building happy and healthy nations as well as for reducing poverty.
And this is also a major cause of environmental pollution.
She described her government's various programmes and policies as well as enthusiasm and sincerity among the concerned authorities and hoped that all citizens of Bangladesh would have access to overall sanitation facilities by the year 2010.
Regarding outcome of the conference, she said it is more important to sustain the goal after it is achieved. She called upon all to continue the collective efforts of all and to be careful so that it is not interrupted.
"Let's now make a commitment to extend sanitation facilities to millions of people not yet served to save millions of children from a premature death in order to build South Asia as a habitat of happy and healthy people," Khaleda said.
After the closing session, the Prime Minister had a brief meeting with the heads of delegations at the venue.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. During the talks, she hoped that they would work out a common strategy also at international
level to ensure safe water and sanitation facilities for all people in the world.
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