The joint WSSCC / UN-HABITAT "Urban WASH" campaign is the beginning of a collaborative initiative of the two organisations and the countries of the Latin America and the Caribbean region to mobilize political support and local action to deal with an outstanding human development crisis of this century. At the dawn of the 21st century, some 1.1 billion people on Earth are still without access to a safe water supply and over 2.4 billion are without adequate sanitation. In Latin America there are 78 millions of people without access to a safe water supply and over 117 millions without adequate sanitation - mostly the poor and marginalized citizens living in squalid, unhealthy environments in the developing world and in continuously growing megacities.

The number of urban dwellers without access to safe water has reached an all time high in the year 2000 despite broad international efforts to reduce it. In Latin America, 82 million people gained access to a safe water supply and 85 million to sanitation facilities during the decade of the 1990´s. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD, September 2002) has left no doubt that safe water, basic sanitation and hygiene are central to achieving sustainable development. The battle for providing safe water, basic sanitation and hygiene education must therefore be waged in human settlements, particularly in the burgeoning cities of the world. The "Urban WASH" campaign will focus not only on the basic services provision for water supply, wastewater, solid waste and urban drainage, but also tackle the prevailing legal, regulatory and management structures of water services.

The WASH campaign on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene issues has been launched by the WSSCC in 2001 on a global level in order to address the issue of billions of unserved people. WASH is a political and social imperative because:

• at any given moment almost half the developing world's people are sick from unsafe water and sanitation
• lack of water supply and sanitation robs millions of dignity, energy, and time
  frequent disease is the main cause of poor growth and early death
• for a third of the world the real environmental crisis is squalor, smells and disease on the doorstep
• half of the developing world's hospital beds are occupied by victims of unsafe water and poor sanitation
• economies suffer as hygiene-related illness costs developing countries 5 billion working days a year
• sustainable development starts with people's health and dignity

UN-HABITAT has awarded WSSCC with one of ten UN-HABITAT Scrolls of Honour for the WASH campaign and its contribution towards sanitation hygiene from the urban poor. The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is a leading international organisation that enhances collaboration in the water supply and sanitation sector, specifically in order to attain universal coverage of water and sanitation services for poor people around the world. WSSCC operates with a mandate from the United Nations General Assembly from 1990.

More information: www.wsscc.org

• Rio de Janeiro: Manuel Manrique, UN-HABITAT, Tel: +55-21 2515-1700, Fax +55 21 2515-1701, E-mail: manrique@habitat-lac.org
• Geneva: Sören Bauer, WSSCC, Tel.: +41-22 917 8657, Fax: +41-22 917 8084, E-mail: bauers@who.int