No society can speak of equality without equal access to water, says Ouedraogo
By Yinka Adeyemi, Communication Officer, ECA
22 March 2004

No society can speak of equality without equal access to water and sanitation, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, Josephine Ouedraogo, said today in Addis Ababa.

In a keynote address at the Africa-wide launch of 2005-2015 the international decade for Action, "Water for Life", Madame Ouedraogo called for additional effort to increase the access of poor people to water.

"Today, poor people in per-urban communities in Africa pay 3-10 times more for water than people in urban centers who have access to piped safe water. Women and girl children still walk miles daily to fetch water for domestic use while millions of our children die needlessly from water borne diseases which have been eradicated elsewhere," she said.

At the end of the decade, said Madame Ouedraogo, "these challenges are the true barometers which we must use to measure our success."

She called on African leaders to lead the way in propelling action towards making Africa''s water resources tools for development and regional peace.

"If we acknowledge water as critical for life, then we must treat the resource as if our lives depend on it and make this decade one of action and implementation," she said.