Getting poor people access to clean drinking water means reforming U.S. foreign assistance. Really.
There’s been a lot of great momentum lately about providing clean water for the nearly one billion people in the world without it. In 2005, Congress passed the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, and from 2007 to 2008, US funding for water, sanitation, and hygiene programs went up 45%.
So what’s missing from this picture, you ask? The system to implement it. If we want to make a difference in helping poor families around the world access clean water, we need a modern and efficient aid agency to deliver on our promises. USAID needs an overall plan for fighting poverty in order to get the most out of this amazing infusion of resources for providing clean water. The best way to make a long-term difference in water and sanitation is to integrate water – and all other the other life-saving assistance that ONE members fight for – into a single strategy for fighting global poverty.
The current system is broken. There’s not even a single place in the US government to find out what the US is currently spending on water & sanitation and in what countries. In the Water for the Poor Act of 2005, Congress mandated an annual report on the government’s progress. But because there are fifteen different US agencies implementing water or sanitation programs overseas, the report does not capture all our efforts. The Millennium Challenge Corporation provided $429 million to help countries upgrade their water delivery systems and connect more households to clean water last year. But that investment is not even reflected in the Water for the Poor Act Report country data, which only reports USAID and State Department activities.
A scattered bureaucracy may not sound like such an urgent problem, but lives hang in the balance: without a clear direction, our water and sanitation assistance simply isn’t going where it’s needed the most. In 2008,
- Jordan received over $41 million from USAID for water and sanitation programs in FY 2008, even though 98% of its population already has access to improved drinking water.
- Niger, where only 42% of the population has access to improved drinking water, received only one-fiftieth that amount.
Learn more about why lending your voice to the fight for foreign assistance reform can also mean improving access to clean drinking water and improved sanitation for the world’s poorest.
-Porter McConnell, Aid Reform Campaign, Oxfam America
Filed Under: Justice Issues Feed • Politics • Poverty
