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Water & Sanitation As A Human Right
MANY governments around the world pay only lip service to the problem of water and sanitation thereby denying an essential human right to their populations. Though governments attest to the importance of water and sanitation as evidenced by MDG on water and sanitation, they make very little investment in the sector. The matter is rarely given prominence on national political agendas.
Water as a human right refers to the human right to safe water and adequate sanitation without which the enjoyment of other essential human rights can be jeopardized. The availability of safe drinking water and hygienic sanitation facilities can indeed play a key role in the fight against poverty, hunger, child deaths and gender inequality.
According to the UN, over 1,100 million people do not have access to safe drinking water and over 2,600 million have no access to adequate sanitation. To complicate matters, water sources throughout the world are drying up, chiefly due to climate change and the mismanagement of water resources.
Dirty water and lack of sanitation affects mainly the poor, disadvantaged and voiceless in society, that is, women, girls and children.
Approximately, 1,8 million children die every year to diarrhea because of lack of access to clean water, more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. More than 50 percent of the cases occur in Africa and Asia despite the existence of inexpensive and efficient means of water treatment.
”In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water,” said Caryl M. Stern, President and CEO, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF at the launch of a report, titled “Diarrhea: Why Children Are Still Dying and What Can Be Done“. Read the rest of this entry »
Lack of HIV Prevention Services for the Displaced
The power of education in fostering a better and effective response to HIV and AIDS is undeniable.
Education promotes knowledge and with knowledge about HIV and AIDS, individuals, families and communities have the ability to make informed choices about their behavior.
However, governments and international donor organizations often underplay this important intervention, particularly in the emergency phase of the cycle of displacement, says a report recently issued by UNHCR and UNESCO on the importance of education to populations that find themselves victims of displacement due to conflict, disaster or other emergencies.
Education can play a key role in helping refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) cope with the negative excesses of their circumstances, such as ignorance, exploitation, violence and the risk of HIV infection.
Many factors combine to put IDPs and refugees at the risk of HIV infection, including loss of livelihoods, lack of access to basic services, poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, and violence. Read the rest of this entry »
Mugabe’s Wrath of the State
President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union has, in recent days, embarked on a warpath against civil society organizations.
President Robert Mugabe: Africa’s strongman
Ordinary citizens with political views that favor the opposition political party, Movement for Democratic Change, have also not escaped the wrath of the state.
Mugabe’s government accuses civil society organizations of both working in cahoots with the MDC and being funded by Western countries.
In Zimbabwe today, the venom of the state machinery, including the military, the police and the state-owned media, is being unleashed against anyone perceived to be connected to the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections in March — a first in Zimbabwe since it attained independence from British rule in 1980.
Since 1980, ZANU-PF has won all the parliamentary and presidential elections by any means possible — fair, foul or murderous.
Incumbent President Mugabe, who narrowly lost to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai 43.2 percent to 47.9 percent in the March election, blames Western forces (as he has glibly done for the past eight years) for his loss of popularity.
Ahead of a runoff election scheduled for June 27, Mugabe has invoked all the state machinery’s hell against his people, and is determined to win by any means necessary.
Throughout the country, opposition supporters have been abducted and discovered with limbs, private parts, ears and tongues chopped off in scenes reminiscent of ritual killings.
“It’s a desperate situation,” said Keith Mazonde, a Harare-based nongovernmental organization worker in a Skype interview, “But the old man [Mugabe] is going nowhere.”
“I think he will win, but if you get me right, it’s a different kind from the win we know,” added Mazonde.
The clampdown of civil society organizations by Mugabe’s government comes in the wake of an order barring humanitarian aid organizations from distributing food and agricultural aid to impoverished Zimbabweans.
Mugabe has accused humanitarian aid organizations of using food handouts to campaign in favor of the opposition. NGOs have been ordered to re-apply for operating licenses.
According to Zimbabwe’s National Association of Nongovernmental Organizations, HIV patients will likely die as a result of the ban on food aid because they rely on NGOs for home-based care and antiretroviral medical assistance.
“The country has become a bedlam for people seeking an honest means of living. It looks like it will get better if only Mugabe goes, and a government of national unity is the way forward,” said Obert Sherera, an NGO worker.
UNICEF estimates that a total of 185,000 children are likely to miss the essential support they need, including healthcare and nutrition, and labels the government ban against NGOs a “human rights violation.”
“One day it will all come to an end but for now people are living in fear,” said Nornia Dumare, a political activist in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city.
Already, political analysts are saying that under the current circumstances it will be impossible for Zimbabwe to hold a free and fair presidential election.
According to a Human Rights Watch report, the Zimbabwean government’s campaign of violence and intimidation against the opposition MDC has extinguished any chance of a free and fair presidential runoff on June 27.
The report titled “‘Bullets for Each of You’: State-Sponsored Violence Since Zimbabwe’s March 29 Elections,” said that 36 politically motivated deaths and 2,000 victims of violence have been recorded in the run-up to the June runoff election.
“Since the runoff was announced the violence in Zimbabwe has gotten even worse,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Zimbabweans can’t vote freely if they fear their vote may get them killed.”
The Imminent Threat of Global Water Wars
There is no consensus among water analysts on whether there will be global wars over water ownership, but all factors point to a likely explosion of both intra and inter-state conflict of the precious liquid.
According to UNESCO, globally there are 262 international river basins: 59 in Africa, 52 in Asia, 73 in Europe, 61 in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 17 in North America, and overall, 145 countries have territories that include at least one shared river basin.
UNESCO states that between 1948 and 1999, there have been 1,831 “international interactions” recorded, including 507 conflicts, 96 neutral or non-significant events, and most importantly, 1,228 instances of cooperation around water-related issues.
As a result, some experts argue that the idea of water wars is rather far fetched given the precedent of water cooperation that has been exhibited by many of the countries around the world.
“Despite the potential problem, history has demonstrated that cooperation, rather than conflict, is likely in shared basins,” says UNESCO.
However, the fact remains that throughout the world, water supplies are running dry, and the situation is being compounded by inappropriate management of water resources which will unravel previous international cooperation around water.
“Water has four primary characteristics of political importance: extreme importance, scarcity, maldistribution, and being shared. These make internecine conflict over water more likely than similar conflicts over other resources,” says Frederick Frey, of the University of Pennsylvania.
“Moreover, tendencies towards water conflicts are exacerbated by rampant population growth and water-wasteful economic development. A national and international ‘power shortage,’ in the sense of an inability to control these two trends, makes the problem even more alarming,” he adds.
Already, a third of the global population is said to be short of water, sparking fears of social fallout and violence, especially among the world’s poorest and most malnourished people.
Water is perhaps one of the most important yet overlooked elements to earthly life. That’s why the depletion of this precious resource portents serious clashes between communities and nations.
Water, that special liquid which is essential for the survival of all living things, could become a bombshell that will rip apart communities and nations if not managed properly in today’s world.
As global water sources become depleted due to a combination of factors including overpopulation and overuse, it is inevitable that there will be an increase in competition for the special liquid.
Both climatic and human-induced changes are having a negative impact on the world’s water resources. The increasing variability caused by climate change will have numerous consequences on human life.
According to the World Water Council, population growth – coupled with industrialization and urbanization – will result in an increasing demand for water and will have serious consequences on the environment.
Potential social and political division and unrest over access to water will hit hard marginalized populations in developing countries.
As water resources run dry, there will be a reluctance to share the resource in a peaceful and equitable manner.
According to US military analysts, “global-warming water problems will make poor, unstable parts of the world – the Middle East, Africa and South Asia – even more prone to wars, terrorism and the need for international intervention.”
It is predicted that sea-level rise floods will potentially destabilize South Asia countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.
The Middle East and North Africa is also faced with acute water shortages, a situation that will pit the countries in the region against each other.
“The only matter that could take Egypt to war against is water,” the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat tellingly said in 1979.
Water security is increasingly becoming a military priority for many of the countries in the Middle East, and the threat of wars between countries is real.
In Africa, the scarcity of water will result in food insecurity for already marginalized communities, especially in the rural areas where the majority of the people live. And this will form the basis for internal extremism as people will be forced to migrate and compete for resources.
In all corners of the globe, the animal kingdom will suffer immensely as human beings fight each other over access to water.
“Water is connected to everything we care about – energy, human health, food production and politics,” said Peter Glieck, president of the Pacific Institute, a global think tank, “And that fact alone means we better pay more attention to the security connections. Climate will effect all of those things. Water resources are especially vulnerable to climate change.”
Does Teacher Training Matter to Developing Countries?
Since time immemorial, teachers of all types have always acted as a doorway that leads people, especially young people, through the maze of knowledge.
The quality of the teacher has and will always be what determines the confidence and progress that is made by the student. If the teacher is bad, it will only reflect in the student’s attitude and behavior.
Better teacher training is therefore an essential component of a student’s process, and consequently a student’s personal advancement is the heart of national progress.
That is why better teacher training is a key fundamental to national progress. The goal to achieve universal education cannot be achieved if teachers in developing countries are not well trained to deliver quality education to students.
According to UNESCO, Sub-Saharan Africa requires 1.6 million additional primary school teachers,450,000 new teachers are required across the Arab States, and an additional 325,000 teachers in South and East Asia, primarily in Afghanistan.
But it is not quantity alone that will make a difference to these mainly developing regions of the world. Rather, effective teacher recruitment, training and deployment policies and ongoing support is key to ensuring that progress is realized in developing countries.
Education is a lifelong necessity for the individual as well as professional growth but only if that education is provided by a teacher who fully understands their job and executes it properly.
When students receive proper training and a subsequently go into the world, the sum of what they go on to achieve is determined by the quality of teachers that they have had in their life.
The development of teachers thus has an incredible impact on developing countries’ ability to build a solid base of well trained human resources. A human resources base that consists of people with quality skills acquired through teaching is essential for progress.
A lack of teacher training capacity will only derail the ability of developing nations to figure out solutions to the major problems that they face.
However, while highly critical, training teachers alone is not enough. Well trained teachers require effective incentive schemes so that they can efficiently deliver knowledge to students. Effective incentive schemes also ensure that well trained teachers are retained.
Also, teachers need to be supplied with proper resources that will enable them to carry out their work. In addition, teachers need to function in an environment in which they are free from intimidation and victimization, conditions that are usually non-existent in many developing countries.
To make matters worse, in many developing countries, well trained teachers and other professionals have been victims of brain drain thereby contributing to the regression of their own countries, and costing national budgets dedicated toward teacher training immensely.
Even if well trained teachers are victims of brain drain, it does not negate the fact that the process of training teachers is an essential bedrock to progress and development.
Put bluntly, poor teacher training is indeed a barrier to the improvement of education and progress outcomes in developing countries.
For example, in the teaching of math and science subjects, teacher quality does matter in order to convey highly abstract concepts to the students. In the event that the teacher is not well trained, he or she will not be able to encourage students to think on their own. The same goes for other subjects.
Well-trained teachers are therefore critical in helping students to identify both what they are good at and what they want to do in their lives.
In a full cycle format, well trained teachers have the ability to adequately impart knowledge to students, and if well taught, students can go on to use the knowledge in sectors that contribute to the overall growth of developing countries.
Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha
